


The Raven Girls

by Jamie_Angel



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, How Do I Tag, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I Wrote This While Listening to Hozier's Music, This Is STUPID, i am very lesbian and im in love with all of them, if i didnt write this i would've died, so this is the end product
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 35,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27549613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jamie_Angel/pseuds/Jamie_Angel
Summary: Raven Girls are, in Blue's opinion, the very worst of the rich. They're trouble, with their expensive cars and phones.Blue's general opinion of Raven Girls will never change, but he does develop a certain fondness for a certain four. (not that he would ever admit)This is the year Blue will fall in love. This would be exciting, if Blue were not destined to kill his true love with his kiss.This is the year that he discovers that magic is real.(AKA I'm a lesbian and the mental image of *them* is a LOT okay? It's a gender swap AU)
Relationships: Adam Parrish/Blue Sargent, Blue Sargent/ Richard Gansey III (eventually), Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish (hinted)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22





	1. when St Peter loses cool and closes the gates

**Author's Note:**

> i am immensely attracted to the idea of every single one of them.

St. Mark’s Day isn’t a holiday most people mark on their calendars. In fact, most people don’t realize St. Mark has his own day.  
  
This day, however, was April 24th, St. Mark’s Eve and Blue Sargent was sitting in a graveyard.  
  
It wasn’t the first time he had done this. It was, though, the first time he’d done so with his half-aunt Neeve. She was a plump woman with amazingly beautiful hands, who ran a psychic tv show and had announced, upon arriving on their doorstep, that Blue was fated to find his true love this year.  
  
Now, to most people this would’ve been exciting news. But Blue Sargent wasn’t most people. In fact, he tried very hard to _not_ be most people, from the chipped paint on his combat boots to the sides of an overly large t-shirt held together with safety pins.  
  
The most curious thing about Blue Sargent, is his curse. Ever since his mother, Maura, had sat him down for his first tarot reading, he’s been told that if he kisses his true love, they’d die.  
  
Neeve and Blue sat in uneasy silence, though this was not Blue’s fault. Neeve had a very eerie feeling to her, a presence not quite serene enough to be calming, and so balanced on the brink of uncomfort.  
  
That morning, while Blue had been adjusting the safety pins on his shirt in the bathroom mirror (to make sure none of them were accidentally even) he had asked his mother what Neeve’s deal was.  
  
Maura, only visible through the lines she had traced on the steamed up shower door, had responded. “That’s what she’s known for.”  
  
Personally, Blue didn’t think that it was a very good thing to be known for.  
  
“Do you hear that?” Neeve asks, her voice all too loud for such a quiet night.  
  
“No.” Blue says, although he means to ask if she asks because she _does_ hear something. “I don’t hear things like that.”  
  
Neeve cocks her head to the side like an over interested puppy.  
  
“I just make things louder for everyone else.” He explains, feeling rather tired of telling people this.  
  
“Ah, that’s why Maura was so eager for you to come along. Do you assist readings as well?” Neeve still hadn’t uncocked her head.  
  
Blue knew it was incredibly difficult for his mother to _not_ have him in most readings, just based on how much he amplified other people’s talents.  
  
“”Only when they’re important.” He replied  
  
Neeve looked away, breaking her creepy gaze. “That’s a rare and valuable gift.”  
  
“Oh, _pshaw.”_ Blue said in a way that was supposed to be funny. He’d been alive sixteen and a bit years, and had gotten used to the concept of not being a psychic. He didn’t want Neeve thinking he was about to start having an identitiy crisis over the fact. He kicked his foot backwards into the wall, causing a small spray of brick to crumble.  
  
“You still have time to grow into your clairvoyant talents.” Neeve added.  
  
Blue didn’t reply. He wasn’t interested in telling other people’s futures. He wanted to go out and find his own.  
  
Neeve traced a finger through the dust that had accumulated on the wall. “When I drove in I passed a school. Aglionby Academy. Do you go there.”  
  
Blue snorted, but Neeve, of course, didn’t understand. She wasn’t from Henrietta. But, surely someone like her would have seen the pink sports cars parked outside and guessed that it wasn’t the school the women of 300 Fox Way could afford.  
  
“No, that’s an all-girls school. For, like, the daughters of politicians and pop stars and-” Blue searched for another kind of person who would send their daughter to Aglionby. “The daughters of business men too busy to parent.”  
  
Neeve raised an eyebrow at the judgement in his tone.  
  
“No, truthfully, they’re awful.” Blue said, thinking off the horrid chequered skirts, clicky shoes and raven emblem embossed v-neck sweaters. “They think they’re all that, better than us, and that we’re all falling over ourselves to get a chance with them. They drink themselves stupid every week and spray paint all over the back of Nino’s.”  
  
Raven girls were the main reason blue had thought of his rules. One, stay away from girls because they were trouble. Two, stay away from Aglionby girls because they’re bastards.  
  
Neeve turned her attention back to Blue. “You seem like a very sensible boy.”  
  
Blue strained to stop a grimace. Blue already knew he was sensible. Sensibility was ingrained young when one grows up with as little money as the Sargents.  
  
Blue looked away from Neeve’s penetrating gaze and focused on what Neeve drew in the dust. “What’s that? Mom drew it this morning.”  
  
“Did she?” Neeve asked. Together they studied the pattern. It was made up of three, curved lines interesting to make a weird triangle. “Did she mention what it was?”  
  
“She was in the shower. We were talking about something else.” Blue said, not mentioning that they were talking about Neeve herself.  
  
“I dreamt it. I wanted to see what it looked like drawn out.” She dusted her beautiful palm through the pattern, erasing it completely. “I think it’s starting.”  
  
This was the entire reason we come here. Every year, Maura would sit on this wall and recite names for Blue to write down in a notebook. These were the names of people born in Henrietta who will die in the next year. It’s kind of morbid, but it’s one of Maura’s most in demand services. People’ll pay good money to know when they or a loved one will die, so they can get their affairs in order. And so, Maura would talk to the spirits. They wouldn’t talk if Blue wasn’t there.  
  
It was nice to feel needed, but most of the time _needed_ was more of a nicer way to say _useful.  
  
_“Can you see anything?” Blue asked, rubbing his hands together for warmth before snatching up a notebook.  
  
Neeve said. “Something just touched my hair.”  
  
Blue shivered, and with cold. “One of the spirits?”  
  
“Not the future dead. The other spirits are called by your energy. Maura didn’t elaborate on the effect you’d have.”  
  
Blue wasn’t exactly comforted by the idea of _other_ spirits being attracted to him. He watched as one of Neeve’s curls was lifted into the air.  
  
“Are they-”  
  
“Who are you? Brian Harlow.”Neeve interrupted. “What’s your name? Angel McCormack. What’s your name? Mable Hughes.”  
  
Scribbling to catch up, Blue wrote the names as neatly as possible, phonetically, as Neeve reeled them off. Every no and then, he would look up, just to see if the ghosts were actually visible. They weren’t.  
  
The list was a roster of old names like Dorothy and Melvin, along with several repeated last names. Families around here were big, not powerful but respected.  
  
Neeve’s voice became sharp. “What’s your name? _Excuse me,_ what’s your name?” Her expression looked wrong on her face. Purely out of habit, Blue let his eyes drag toward where Neeve’s where fixed.  
  
And he saw someone.  
  
His heart jackhammered like he just downed a pint of espresso. Beside the senseless beating of his heart, she was stood there morosely. Blue shouldn’t be able to see anyone, but he could see her.  
  
“I see her.” Blue tugged on Neeve’s shirt. “Neeve, I see her.”  
  
She wandered, like she didn’t know where to go. She was a young girl –his age perhaps- in a chequered skirt and jumper, hair plastered to her face. She wasn’t as opaque as a normal person, but she wasn’t _gone_ like Blue always imagined spirits to be. Her face was indistinct and blurred, smudgy and unidentifiable.  
  
She was so _young._ It was haunting.  
  
As Blue watched, she worried the bottom of her lip with her thumb, like she was still alive. It made Blue shiver. She stumbled forward as if pushed from behind.  
  
“Get her name.” Neeve hissed, pulling the notebook out of Blue’s unmoving hands. “I need to get to the others, and she won’t answer me!”  
  
“Me?” Blue asked, but slid off the wall anyway. His heart felt like it was going to burst out of his ribcage. He asked, unsurely. “What’s your name?”  
  
She didn’t seem to hear him. She began to move again to the church door, with slow movements. It seemed, to Blue, like a pretty sad way to enter death.  
  
Not paying much attention to Neeve asking the other spirits, Blue followed after the girl.  
  
“Who are you?” He called from a safe distance. He didn’t know if spirits were violent, but one can never be too safe, even if she seemed more lost than angry.  
  
She dropped her head into her hands, truly expressionless. Not human shaped in any way, but a girl none the less. Blue stole closer until he was close enough to touch her shoulder.  
  
His hands were freezing and he batted away the impulse to rub them together for warmth.  
  
“Please.” He asked softly, touching a hand to his shoulder. Ice flooded his body.  
  
_This is fine,_ he tells himself, _she’s just using my energy to stay visible._  
  
Again, she asked. “Will you tell me your name?”  
  
She faced him and, with quite a shock, he realised that she wore an Aglionby jumper.  
  
“Gansey.” She whispered. No, not whispered. It was, rather, a suggestion of a voice in a far-off place. A voice with the volume turned down.  
  
Blue stared at the hair plastered to skin, the rain-dampened jumper and the spatter of raindrops on her tights. This close, he could smell faint mint, but he wasn’t sure if it was a _her_ smell or a _spirit_ smell.  
  
“Is that all?” He asked, keeping his voice hushed.  
  
Gansey closed her eyes. “That’s all there is.”  
  
She fell to her knees, a gesture with no sound, for she was not really there, and splayed one hand flat on the dirt.  
  
“Neeve.” Blue said. “Neeve, she’s going to die.”  
  
Neeve, who had come to hover over Blue’s shoulder said. “Not yet, but soon.”  
  
Gansey was almost gone, fading into nothingness.  
  
“Why- why can I see him?”  
  
Gansey faded in the entirety, and warmth slowly started seeping back into Blue. His heart began to return to its normal tempo. There was something dangerous lodging itself in his lungs, though. Something very close to grief.  
  
“There is only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve, Blue.” Neeve said, in a voice like her own but not. “Either your her true love, or you killed her.”  
  
It needn’t be said that both rules applied in this particular case.  
  
  



	2. all men have secrets and here is mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the camaro breaks down :(

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> them? I am in love. 
> 
> i'll probably explain the names next chapter

“It’s me.” Gansey said, looking disapprovingly down at the hood of his car. The Camaro’s hood was open, but that was more for show than anything. Alison would know what to do. It was rather unfortunate that Alison wasn’t here.   
  
Gansey had managed to pull to the side of the road before the Camaro had let out a groan of defeat.  
  
Through the phone, her roommate Aidan Lynch responded. “You missed World History. I assumed you were dead in a ditch.”  
  
Gansey pulled her phone away from her ear to check the time. She had missed a lot more than World History, it was nearly lunch time. How odd, that she should be in school and not alone in a graveyard.  
  
Putting her phone back to her ear, she asked. “Did you get notes for me?”  
  
“Dude, I thought you were dead in a ditch.” Aidan replied, as of this was obvious.  
  
Gansey sighed. _She_ would’ve got Aidan notes. It would’ve been fruitless, and Aidan wouldn’t have used them, but nonetheless. “The Pig stopped. Come get me.”  
  
An old Sedan slowed as it passed Gansey. Both Gansey and the car were easy on the eyes, but she doubted that’s why the occupants of the Sedan stared. If there was thing that the people of hated Henrietta loved more than seeing Aglionby girls and their misfortune, it was seeing the families of Aglionby girls and their misfortune.  
  
Aidan swore once, but creatively, down the phone line. “Come on, man.”  
  
“You aren’t going to class anyway. Oh, you know what, it’ll be lunch time anyway.” Gansey said, and then added, because she’s a polite person, “Please.”  
  
Aidan was silent for a long time. She was very good at being silent; she knew how uncomfortable it made people. Gansey, however, had become immune from prolonged exposure. She leaned into the open window of the Camaro’s passenger side window to find food in the glove box. Next to an EpiPen, there was a slice of beef jerky that she didn’t remember buying. It was entirely possible that it came with the car.  
  
Finally, Aidan said. “Where are you?”  
  
Gansey exhaled in relief. “Next to the Henrietta exit sign at 64. Could you bring me a burger and few gallons of petrol?”  
  
The Camaro’s petrol was (probably) fine, but it wouldn’t hurt.  
  
“Gansey.” Aidan said acidically.  
  
“Bring Alison with you.”  
  
Aidan hung up.   
  
Gansey pulled off her jumped, balled it up and threw it in the backseat, along with a mess of things. Everyday things – her chemistry textbook, an empty coffee cup and a broken CD case- and the things she had acquired in the last few months of living in Henrietta – journal, digital recorder and a mass of crinkled maps. She picked out the digital recorder, causing a pizza receipt to join a pile of nearly identical receipts amassing in the footwell.  
  
Last night, she had spent hours upon hours sitting outside an abandoned church. It was possibly not the best place to contact the future dead, but Gansey kept her hopes high when it came to St. Mark’s Eve. It wasn’t that he expected to see the dead. Almost every source she had come across had stated that one needed to possess the “second sight”. Gansey barely had the first sight before she put her contacts in every morning.   
  
She had just hoped for something.  
  
And that’s what she got. Still, she wasn’t entirely sure that this was a _something_ yet. She’d have to ask Aidan and Alison. Maybe Charlotte, if she felt like it.  
  
Gansey settled in the driver’s side seat with the door open, weighing the digital recorder in her hands as if it was a foreign object. With the toe of her shoe, she traced the symbol of the ley line in the gravel by the side of the road.  
  
She sighed. Henrietta looked like a place full of magic. The valley whispered secrets and the mountain breeze cried in the night. It was, in a way, easier to believe that the magic wouldn’t just present itself to her, rather than believing it didn’t exist at all.   
  
Aidan Lynch’s charcoal BMW pulled up behind the Camaro. Gansey felt the thumping bass in the stereo under her feet before she turned to look. She stood as Aidan opened her door, looking thoroughly annoyed. In the passenger seat was Alison Parrish. She was the third member of Gansey’s closest friends. The smooth collar of her blouse was perfect above her sweater, and she had one slim hand around Aidan’s cell phone.  
  
Through the windscreen, Alison and Gansey had a silent conversation. Alison furrowed her eyebrows, asking _Did you find anything?_ Gansey widened her eyes to respond, _You tell me.  
  
_ Phone still pressed to her ear, Alison frowned and turned the volume down on the stereo, then said something Gansey couldn’t hear into Aidan’s phone.  
  
Aidan slammed the car door – she slammed everything, so this wasn’t a surprise. She said, with vehemence. “My bitch sister wants us to meet her at Nino’s tonight. With _Kyle._ ”  
  
“Is that who’s on the phone?” Gansey asked, brushing non-existent dirt of her skirt. “What’s _Kyle_?”  
  
Aidan moved round to the trunk of the BMW and hefted a container of petrol out, making little to no effort to stop the grease smearing her clothes. Like both Gansey and Alison, Aidan wore the Aglioby school uniform, but she managed to break as many rules as possible with it. Her tie, worn only for this purpose, was knotted in a style known only as _contempt._ Her skirt was unevenly rolled up to the tops of her thighs. Her shirt was only half tucked in and her tights were made up of more ladders than actual tights.  
  
Aidan smiled, thin and sharp. “Delia’s latest. We’re supposed to doll up for him.”  
  
Gansey disliked having to play nice with Aidan’s older sister, but she understood the necessity of it. Freedom was a complicated thing and, at this moment in time, Delia held the keys to Aidan’s.  
  
Aidan pried the digital recorder out of Gansey’s hands and swapped it for the petrol can. “She wants to do it tonight because she knows I have class.”  
  
The fuel tank for the Camaro was hidden behind the spring-loaded license plate and so Aidan watched, with no offer of help, as Gansey wrestled with the lid, the petrol and the license plate.   
  
“You could have done this.” Gansey told her. “Since you don’t care about messing up your shirt.”  
  
With a look of complete apathy, Aidan scratched at an old scab beneath the leather bands on her wrist. Last week, she and Alison had taken turns dragging each other on a moving dolly behind the BMW, and they were both covered in scratches to prove it.  
  
“Ask me if I found something.” Gansey said.  
  
Sighing, Aidan asked. “Did you find something?”  
  
Aidan didn’t much sound interested, but she never did. It was hard to tell when she was actually interested.   
  
Fuel spilt onto Gansey’s skirt. This was the second she’d ruined in a month. She didn’t mean to be careless – Alison had told her many a time that “things cost _money,_ Gansey – she just didn’t realise what the consequences of her actions were until it was too late.  
  
She said. “Something. I think. I recorded four hours of audio, and something – I don’t know what it means.” She gestured vaguely to the recorder with one hand. “Give it a listen.”  
  
Turning to the interstate, Aidan pressed play. There was silence and crickets for a minute, then, Gansey’s voice.  
  
“Gansey.” It said.  
  
Another voice, male, and sounding very far away. “Is that all?”  
  
Aidan’s now wary eyes darted to Gansey’s. Voices murmured, inaudible except for the suggestion of questions and answers.  
  
Gansey’s disembodied voice spoke again. “That’s all there is.”  
  
Aidan glanced at Gansey again, doing her smoker breath: inhale through flared nostrils and exhale though parted lips.  
  
Aidan didn’t smoke. She liked her habits with hangovers.  
  
Aidan stopped the recorder. “You’re dripping petrol on your skirt, idiot.”  
  
“Aren’t you going to ask what was happening when I recorded that?”   
  
Aidan didn’t ask, she just kept coolly looking at Gansey, which was the same thing for her.  
  
“Nothing was happening, that’s what, Aidan.” Gansey said, setting the petrol canister down. “I was staring at a car park full of bugs, and there was nothing.  
  
Gansey wasn’t sure she would hear anything. As she lacked any psychic ability, Gansey had brought a recorder, as the voices were usually only audible when played back. The strange thing about this was not the voices, however, it was the fact that one of the voice’s was Gansey’s. She was quite sure she wasn’t a spirit.  
  
“I didn’t _say anything_ all night long. So what’s my voice doing on the recorder?”  
  
“How’d you know it was there?”  
  
“I was listening to it on the way. A lot of nothing and then my voice. Then the Pig broke down.”  
  
“Coincidence.” Aidan said drily, because Gansey had said the phrase _I don’t believe in coincidences_ so many times it was no longer needed.  
  
“What do you think?”   
  
“I think you found the Holy Grail.” Aidan replied, too sarcastic to be useful right now. “Hey, is that Whelk?”  
  
A car had considerably slowed, so they could see the overly curious driver. Gansey did agree that it did look like their resentful Latin teacher, an Aglionby Academy alumnus by the truly unfortunate name of Blanche Whelk. Gansey, with her official title being Esther Cordelia Gansey III, was mostly immune to posh names, but even she had to admit that Blanche Whelk was going over the top.  
  
“Don’t stop and help or anything.” Aidan snarled after the car. “Hey, runt. What went on with Delia?”  
  
This last part was directed at Alison, who had stepped out the BMW. She offered Aidan the phone, who shook her head disdainfully. Aidan despised every phone, including her own.  
  
“She’s coming by at five tonight. “Alison said.  
  
Unlike Aidan, Alison’s Aglionby jumper was second-hand but impeccable. She was slim and tall, with dusty hair pulled into a ponytail and drawn away from a tan, fine-boned face. In every account, she was a sepia photograph from the 40s, even down to the haunting eyes.  
  
“Oh, joy.” Gansey replied. “You’ll be there, yeah?”  
  
“Am I invited?” Alison asked politely. She could be very polite when the situation called for it. When she was nervous, the southern accent she tried too hard to hide slipped out, and it made an appearance now.  
  
Alison never usually needed an invitation. She and Aidan must’ve fought, which was unsurprising. If it had a social security number, Aidan fought with it.  
  
“Don’t be stupid.” Gansey said by way of invitation, and graciously accepted the fast-food bag that Alison offered. “Thanks.”  
  
“Aidan bought it.” Alison said, always quick to assign blame to other when matters included money.  
  
“So, pop quiz, Parrish.” Gansey said, grinning while Alison stooped to inspect the Camaro “Three things that appear in the vicinities of ley lines?”  
  
Indulgently, Alison replied. “Black dogs, demonic presences.”  
  
“Camaros.” Aidan inserted.  
  
Gansey continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “And ghosts, yes. Aidan, the evidence, if you please.”  
  
Aidan rewound the player and pressed play. Together they listened to Gansey say his name into thin air. Alison frowned.  
  
Instead of commenting right away, Alison said. “Try the car.”  
  
Leaving the door hanging open, Gansey slid into the driver’s seat. Aidan played the recording again.  
  
“Come on, Pig!” She snarled.  
  
Gansey turned the key. The engine rolled over once, paused briefly, and then roared to sweet, deafening life. The Pig would drive another day. Even the radio was working, playing a Gwen Stefani song that Gansey quickly turned off.  
  
Aidan whooped once.   
  
Alison leaned into the car. “It’ll get you there but something’s still wrong with it.”  
  
“Great.” Gansey replied, as to be heard over the engine. In the background, the BMW thudded out nearly inaudible bass lines as Aidan burned the rest of her heart out in electronic loops. “Thanks, Alison. Any suggestions?”  
  
“Alison retrieved a slip of paper from her pocket, and offered it to Gansey.  
  
“What’s this?” She asked, struggling to decipher Alison’s erratic handwriting. Her letters always looked like they were running from something. “A number for a psychic?”  
  
“I was going to suggest this if you didn’t find anything last night. Now you have something to ask them about.”  
  
Gansey considered this for a minute. The psychic she had seen in the past had told him that he had money coming his way and that he was destined for great things. The first she’d always known, and the second one she was afraid might be. However, this was a new clue and a new psychic.   
  
“Alright,” she agreed. “What am I asking them?”  
  
Alison handed him the digital recorder and tapped her first finger against the hood of the Camaro twice, thoughtfully.  
  
“I think it’s obvious.” She answered. “We ask them who you were talking to.”


	3. thunder only happens when it's raining

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they scrying

Mornings at 300 Fox Way are rather frantic things, full of bathroom lines, elbows finding sides and at least three people knocking on Blue’s bedroom door to wake him up. There was school for Blue and work for the less intuitive aunts to get ready for. There was burned toast with too much butter, soggy cereal had to be thrown away and the fridge door got left open for half hour increments when someone forgot to close it.  
  
Partway through breakfast, the upstairs phone would begin to ring and Maura would say, tiredly, “Thats the universe calling for you, Orla.” Or something of the sort. The Jimi or Orla or one of the other aunt or half-aunts or family friends or cousins would duke it out for who had to pick it up.  
  
Two years ago, Blue’s cousin Orla had thought that a call-in psychic line would be a helpful addition to the business. After a few skirmishes with Maura, Orla had won. Winning, however, actually involved Orla setting up the line behind Maura’s back. It was not so much a sore spot, as a memory of a sore spot.   
  
Calls came in from seven in the morning, and sometimes a dollar a minute felt more worthwhile than other times.  
  
This day, being the day after the church watch, meant that Blue avoided the usual hurriedness of mornings. He didn’t have to queue outside the bathroom, nor did he have to wait for Orla to move as she dropped toast butter-side down on the floor. When he woke, his room held the dimness of mid-afternoon instead of the brightness of morning sun. One room over, Orla was on the phone. She was either talking to her latest fling, or a psychic caller. Sometimes it was hard to tell.   
  
Blue spent a long time in the bathroom without someone yelling at him to hurry up. Most of this time was spent on his hair, which was long enough to touch the middle of his ears, and usually fell in his face. To stop this from happening, he stole some of Orla’s hairpins and pinned it back so wisps of hair frequently fell out, giving the overall appearance of unkemptness. Blue worked very hard to make sure it never looked kempt in the first place.  
  
“ _Mom.”_ He said as he jumped down the stairs. “Why didn’t you wake me up for school?”  
  
Maura, who was steeping an appalling smelling tea at the kitchen table, didn’t turn around. “I did. Twice.” Then, to herself, she said. “Dammit.”  
  
From the otherside of the table, out of Blue’s line of sight, Neeve’s gentle voice asked. “Do you need help with that, Maura?”  
  
Blue moved to look at Neeve, who was sitting, plump and angelic as ever, at the table with a cup of tea. She didn’t look like she’d missed a night of sleep. She tried to make eye contact with Blue, who firmly avoided that at all costs.   
  
“I’m perfectly capable of making meditation tea, thank you very much.” Maura said to Neeve. To Blue, she added. “I told your school that you had the flu. I emphasised quite clearly that you were vomiting.”  
  
“Thanks for that.” Blue said, pressing his palms to his eyes. He’d never had to miss school after church watch before. Sure, he’d been tired, but never _this_ tired. It was an entirely different tired.  
  
“Was it because I saw her?” Blue asked Neeve, thinking of the faceless Raven Girl. He wished that he wouldn’t think of her so clearly. Or, rather, the suggestion of her, head in her hands and hair plastered to skin. “Is that why I slept so long?”  
  
“Apparently, it’s because you let fifteen spirits wander aimlessly through your body while you had a little chat with a dead girl.” Maura replied, with a not-quite glare at Neeve.  
  
“Is that true? Is it because spirits walked through me?” Blue asked of Neeve.  
  
“You did let them draw a lot of energy from you.” Neeve admitted. “You have a lot of energy, but not that much.”  
  
Blue had two thoughts about this. The first one was _I have a lot of energy?_ and the second one was _I am annoyed by this._ It wasn’t like he’d let the spirits draw his energy. He couldn’t even see the things.  
  
“You should teach him to protect himself.” Neeve told Maura.  
  
“I’m not a wretched mother. I have taught him _some_ things.” Maura said, handing Blue a cup of tea.  
  
“I’m _not_ drinking this.” Blue said, promptly setting the tea down. “It smells awful.” He retrieved a yogurt pot from the fridge. Then, as to support Maura, he told Neeve. “I’ve never had to protect myself at a church watch.”  
  
“You amplify power so much, I’m surprised they don’t find you even here.” Neeve said, indeed looking thoroughly shocked.   
  
“Oh, please.” Maura said irritably. “There is nothing about dead people to be scared of.”  
  
Blue thought of Gansey’s defeated ghost and said. “Mom, can you ever prevent the person’s death? By warning them?”  
  
Before Maura could reply, the phone shrilly rang. This was the downstairs phone, which meant that Orla was still using the upstairs one.  
  
“Dammit, Orla!” Maura cursed, even though Orla was not here to be on the receiving end.   
  
“I’ll get it.” Neeve said.  
  
“Oh, but-” Maura didn’t finish her train of thought. It was possible that she was thinking that Neeve usually worked for a lot more than a dollar a minute, because that was what Blue was thinking.  
  
When Neeve had disappeared out of the room, his mother turned to him and said. “I know what you’re thinking. Most of the people die of unpreventable causes. Heart attacks and cancer, the like. That girl is going to die.”  
  
Blue felt a strange, phantom grief in the pit of his stomach. “You think an Aglionby girl’ll die from a heart attack? Why do you even bother telling your clients if there isn’t a way to stop them dying.”  
  
“So they can get their affairs in order. Complete their bucket lists. That kind of stuff.” His mother responded, fixing Blue with a very knowing gaze. She looked mighty impressive, for someone standing barefoot in the kitchen, holding a cup of tea that reeked of rotting compost.   
  
“I won’t stop you warning her, Blue. Just know that she probably won’t believe you, and even if she did, it most likely won’t save her. Or you could just ruin the last months of her life.   
  
Blue knew Maura was right, at least on the first point. Most people who met his mother thought she did parlour tricks for a living. What would he even do – find a random Aglionby student, tap on the window of her Aston Martin or Porsche and warn her to keep her life insurance policy updated?  
  
“I can’t stop you meeting her. If Neeve is right about why you saw her, the two of you are fated to meet.” Maura said, sounding resigned.  
  
“Fate,” Blue said, glowering. “Is a very weighty word to throw around before breakfast.”  
  
“Everyone else had breakfast hours ago.” Maura pointed out.  
  
There was a small shuffle as Neeve returned. “Wrong number.” She said in that completely apathetic way of hers. “Do you get many of those?”  
  
“We’re one number off from a gentleman escort service.” Maura told her.  
  
“That explains it.” She said as she settled down. “Blue, if you like, I can try to see what killed her.”  
  
This sentence got both Blue and Maura’s attention quickly.   
  
“Yes.” Blue said, immediately.   
  
Maura started to say something, thought better of it, then pressed her lips into a thin line.  
  
“Do you have any grape juice?” Neeve asked.  
  
Confused but not questioning, Blue went to the fridge and pulled out a carton. “Cran-grape?”  
  
“That’ll do.”  
  
Maura silently reached into a cupboard and pulled out a bowl. She set it in front of Neeve.  
  
“I won’t be responsible for anything you see.” Maura said gravely.  
  
“What?” Blue asked, but neither of them deigned to respond.   
  
Neeve poured the juice into the bowl until it reached the lip and Maura turned off the lights. The hazy mid-afternoon light suddenly seemed very bright in comparison.  
  
“If you’re going to watch, do so quietly.” Neeve remarked to no one in particular. “What was her name again?”  
  
“She only said _Gansey_.” Blue said, feeling self-conscious, as if saying her name out loud would do something.  
  
“That’ll do.” Neeve said, repeating her words from earlier.   
  
She leaned over the bowl, lips moving with no sound. This whole scene made what they were doing seem less like a trick of nature and more like a religion.   
  
“Well,” Neeve said. “This is something.”  
  
She said it like “this is _something_ ” and Blue didn’t particularly like the way that sounded.  
  
“What did you see?” Blue asked. “How did she die?”  
  
“I saw her.” Neeve said slowly, not taking her eyes off Maura’s, as if trying to silently communicate something. “And then she disappeared. Into absolutely nothing.”  
  
Maura made the same gesture with her arms that she usually did when she won an argument. Except this time, the argument was won by a bowl of cran-grape juice.  
  
“One moment she was there and the next, she didn’t exist.” Neeve said calmly.  
  
“It happens,” Maura said, trying very hard to avoid looking at Blue. “Here in Henrietta. There’s some place – or some places – that I can’t see. Other times I see things I wouldn’t expect.”  
  
Blue was now reflecting on all the times Maura had insisted on them staying in Henrietta, even when it became increasingly expensive to do so. Blue had once accidently stumbled across an email from one of Maura’s male clients, who had begged Maura to bring Blue and “whatever else you cannot live without” to his beach house in California. Maura had responded that she wasn’t going to do that because of many reasons. One was that she wouldn’t leave Henrietta, and the other was that she wasn’t sure if he was an axe murderer. The man had replied with only a sad faced emoji. Blue, to this day, still wondered what had become of this man.  
  
“I want to know what you saw.” Blue said. “What does “nothing” mean, exactly?”  
  
“I was following her to her death. I felt it was close, chronologically.” Neeve explained. “But then she just vanished into some plane I couldn’t see. I’m not sure how to explain it. I thought there was something wrong with me.”  
  
“There isn’t.” Maura said. When she saw that Blue was still looking on with intrigue, she explained. “It’s like when there isn’t anything on the TV but you still know it’s on. I’ve never seen anyone go _into_ it before, though.”  
  
“Well, she definitely went into it.” Neeve pushed the bowl away from her, slopping cran-grape all over the kitchen table. “you said that’s not all. What else is there?”  
  
“Channels that don’t show up on basic cable.   
  
Neeve sighed and tapped her beautiful fingers on the table. “You didn’t tell me this before.”  
  
“It didn’t seem relevant.” Maura replied.   
  
“A place young women disappear seems rather relevant to me. Your son’s skill also seems quite relevant.”  
  
Neeve gazed levelly at Maura, who pushed out of her chair.  
  
Upon the realization that this conversation was going anywhere, Blue said. “I have work this afternoon.”  
  
“Are you going to work dressed like that?” Maura asked.  
  
Blue looked down at his clothing. It involved a pair of dungarees that had been abused by splatter paint, and a shirt underneath that laced up at the sides. “What’s wrong with this?”  
  
Maura shrugged. “Absolutely nothing. I always wanted an eccentric child, I just didn’t realise to what extent my evil plans were working. What time do you get back from work?”  
  
“My shift ends at seven, but I’ll probably end up staying later. Corey is supposed to work until seven-thirty but he’s been talking about how his boyfriend got them tickets for _Evening_ all weeks. He’s been unsubtly dropping hints that he wants me to take his shift.”  
  
“You could say no. That’s always an option. What’s _Evening?_ Is that the one with the girls dying via hatchet?”   
  
“the very one.” Blue said. As he finished the last of his yogurt, he spared a glance at Neeve, who was frowning pensively at the bowl just out of her reach. “Ok, I’m gone.”  
  
He got up, dumping the yogurt pot, empty apart from fruit, in the trashcan and then dropping the spoon in the sink beside his mother. He turned to go upstairs for shoes, Maura’s silence heavy on his back.  
  
“Blue,” Maura said finally. “I don’t have to tell you not to kiss anyone, right?”


	4. girls, don't forget your pearls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uh oh, the Lynch's have tension, who could've forseen this

Alison Parrish had been Gansey’s friend for a near eighteen months, and, by now, she knew that certain things came along with the package. Firstly, there was the belief and tolerance for the supernatural. Secondly, there was having to deal with Gansey’s money troubles. As in, she didn’t care about spending it and didn’t think about it too deeply. Thirdly, and most irritatingly, was having to deal with Gansey’s other friends.   
  
The first two were only problematic when one took Gansey away from Aglionby. The third was only problematic when said friend was Aidan Lynch.  
  
Gansey had once confided in Alison that she was afraid of people not knowing how to handle Aidan. What she had really meant by this was that she was worried that one day someone might fall of Aidan and cut themselves.   
  
Alison sometimes wondered if Aidan had been _Aidan_ before Niall Lynch died, but only Gansey had known her then. Well, Gansey and Delia, but Delia seemed incapable of handling her sister as she was now, which is why this meeting had been arranged while Aidan was in class.  
  
Outside of Monmouth Manufactoring, Alison waited on the first storey landing with Delia and her boyfriend. Boyfriend looked a lot like Daniel, or Brent, or whoever the last boyfriend had been. They were all tan with hair the same colour as Delia’s dark, sharp-toed heels.   
  
Delia was currently wearing the suit required of all the political internship seniors, navy jacket and matching pencil skirt, neatly buttoned white blouse. It made her look about thirty. Alison vaguely wondered if she’d look that official, or if her upbringing would once again give her away.  
  
“Thanks for meeting us.” Delia said.  
  
Alison replied. “No big deal.”  
  
The real reason Alison had agreed to meet Delia and Boyfriend was not out of the kindness of her own heart. There’d been a strange nagging sensation that she’d been experiencing for the past few weeks, that someone had been... _observing_ their search. There were sets of scuffled footprints that didn’t belong to the girls on the stairwell. There’d been a library clerk telling her that an arcane text had been checked out just a day after Alison had returned it. There’d been stares from strangers caught out of the corner of her eye.   
  
It wasn’t like Alison thought Delia was spying on them. Alison knew for definite that Delia was spying on them, but she was also pretty sure that that was more to do with Aidan and less to do with the ley line. Still, observing couldn’t hurt anyone.  
  
Boyfriend was currently glancing around in a way, noticeable for its furtiveness. 1136 Monmouth had the words MONMOUTH MANUFACTURING painted on the side but, for the life of them, neither Gansey nor Alison had been able to find out just what, exactly, Monmouth had manufactured.   
  
Delia stood on her tiptoes to whisper something into Girlfriend’s ear. Alison looked away before Delia could catch her looking. Alison was rather good at watching without being watched. So good, in fact, that only Gansey noticed when she did it.   
  
Boyfriend pointed out of a dirty, cracked window at the black rings in the parking lot left over from when Gansey and Aidan did doughnuts, and Delia’s expression hardened. They could be all Gansey’s doing, but Delia would think the worst and place the blame on Aidan.   
  
Alison had knocked, but she knocked once more. One long, two short. The way she always did.   
  
“This’ll be messy.” She apologised, for Boyfriend’s sake more than anything. Delia already knew the state the apartment will most likely be in, and had probably calculated for it.   
  
There was still no answer.  
  
“Should I call?” Delia asked.  
  
Alison tried the handle, which was locked. Using her knee, she jimmied the door, lifting its hinges until it swung open. Boyfriend made an odd sound of approval in the back of his throat, though the break-in of sorts had more to do with the doors failings, not Alison’s strength.  
  
They all stepped into the apartment and Boyfriend tipped his head back. And back. Then back a bit more. The eight metre high ceilings soared high above them, with exposed iron beams holding up the roof. Gansey’s of-sorts apartment was a dreamer’s laboratory. The first floor spread out before them. Two walls were made up windows, and the other two were covered in maps: the mountains of Virginia, England, Wales, Europe. Sharpie lines arced across each of them.   
  
Everywhere, absolutely everywhere, were piles of books. Not the tidy piles of a pretender, but the slumping, nearly toppling piles of a scholar obsessed. Some of the books were in Latin, not English. Some of them were dictionaries for other languages that other books were in. Some of them actually had Playgirl magazines hidden in them.   
  
Alison felt a familiar pang of wanting. _Yearning_. One day. One day, she’d have enough money to live in a place like this.  
  
Beside Delia, Boyfriend shoved his hands into his pockets, probably a reaction to the carelessness of it all. Slyly, Alison kicked a bra under a nearby table.   
  
In the middle of the room sat Gansey’s bed. It is, for lack of a better word, sad to look at. It’s nothing more than to twin mattresses shoved together on a metal bed frame, duvet and pillows sprawled about in no semblance of made. It was completely intimate in its lack of privacy.  
  
Gansey herself sat hunched over a desk, tapping a biro restlessly, flipping through the ink-dark pages of her journal. Alison, once again, was struck by the agelessness of Gansey. She was either a wise old woman in a young girl’s body, or a young girl in the life of a wise old woman.  
  
“Gansey? It’s us.” Alison announced.   
  
When Gansey didn’t respond, Alison picked her way through to her oblivious friend. Boyfriend made another odd noise at the mini-cardboard Henrietta that was the product of Gansey, a lack of sleep, and paint.   
  
Alison stopped beside Gansey. The whole area smelt very strongly of mint, from the lead she chewed absently. Alison tapped the earbud in Gansey’s right ear, and she startled.  
  
She unplugged her headphones. “Why, hello.”  
  
There was always a sort of 1940s dame look to her, with the slightly tousled, but still fancy looking hair, the narrow hazel eyes and the straight nose, the sweet slope of her jawline. Everything about her suggested power and valour, and possibly a firm handshake.   
  
Boyfriend stared.  
  
Alison remembered finding her intimidating when they’d first met. There were two Gansey’s and only one of them was seen by the public. There was the Gansey who lived in Monmouth, the scholar, the girl, the befriender of Aidan’s and Alison’s and Charlotte’s alike. Then there was the Gansey that the public saw, the prim and proper girl that awoke when she slid her purse into the inside pocket of her expensive handbag.  
  
The former was troubled and passionate and without accent. The latter, however, greeted people with the handsome accent of old Virginia money. It was still unknown to Alison how both Gansey’s co-existed.   
  
“Sorry, I didn’t hear you knock.” Gansey said unnecessarily. She bumped fists with Alison with a smile. The gesture was both entirely native and foreign to her.  
  
“Kyle, this is Gansey.” Delia said pleasantly. She had a very pleasant, easy-listening voice. Alison frequently thought of how funny it was that Delia and Aidan were related, as opposite as they were. “Esther Gansey.”  
  
Gansey was a little chilly as she said. “As Delia knows, it’s my mother who goes by Esther. I just go by Gansey. It’s a family name.” She sounded a little weary at the end.  
  
“You’re Aglionby, right? This place is tricked out. Why don’t you live in the school dorms?” Kyle asked, sounding exactly like someone called Kyle would.  
  
“I own this building” Gansey said. “It’s a better investment than dorm housing. You can’t sell your dorm after you move out, then where did the money go? Nowhere. It’s a waste.”  
  
Esther Gansey III despised being told that she sounded like Esther Gansey II, but right then Alison couldn’t tell the difference.  
  
“Wow.” Kyle said. His eyes flicked over to Alison. They didn’t linger, but she was acutely aware of the fray of her jumper.   
  
“Ky, you won’t believe why Gansey came to Henrietta of all places.” Delia said. “Tell him, Gansey.”  
  
Gansey, looking visibly excited but trying not to, asked. “Do you know anything about Welsh kings?”  
  
Kyle pursed his lips and tugged on his earlobe. “Hmm, let’s see, Llewellyn? Glendower? English Marcher lords?”  
  
Gansey’s smile could’ve blinded the sun. Alison certainly hadn’t known about Llewellyn or Glendower when they’d first met. Gansey had had to explain – though she didn’t seem to annoyed by this – about how Owen Glendower, a Welsh noble, had fought against the English for freedom and then, when capture couldn’t have been avoided, disappeared from the island and, seemingly, from history altogether.   
  
Gansey never seemed to mind retelling the story. When she spoke of the magic and the victory, Alison could see the swell of green hills and the unforgiving mountains Glendower had vanished into.  
  
Listening to Gansey, it was clear to Alison that Glendower was more than a historical figure to Gansey. He was everything she aspired to be.  
  
Gansey now asked Kyle, after she’d finished her story, “Have you heard of sleeping kings? The legend that heroes like Glendower or Arthur aren’t really dead, but just waking to be woken in their tombs.”  
  
Kyle blinked stupidly, and then said. “Sounds like a metaphor.”  
  
Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as they had thought.  
  
“Maybe so.” Gansey said. She whirled, making an arching gesture with her hand at the wall covered in maps. “I think Glendower’s body was brought to Virginia. I want to find where he’s buried.”  
  
To Alison’s immense relief, Gansey left out the part where she thought that Glendower was still alive, centuries later. She also didn’t say anything of a favour, or why she was so intensely fixated on finding Glendower in the first place.   
  
“Wild.” Kyle said. “Why’d you think he’s here?”  
  
There were two explanations to this. One was rooted in history, the other in magic. Alison, on her worse days, founding herself barely believing in the former. This was one reason, of many, proving that Aidan was a better friend to Gansey then Alison ever could be. Aidan’s belief in the supernatural was unwavering; Alison’s was faulty at best.  
  
Kyle, because Gansey had deigned him sceptical, got the historical version. In her best professor voice, she explained all her evidence.  
  
Part way through the lecture, Monmouth’s reclusive third resident, emerged and sat down, cross-legged on the floor. Charlotte’s orderly room was directly next to the office Aidan had claimed as hers.   
  
Charlotte stepped into the room, not so much smiling at Kyle, but open-mouth gazing at him. She wasn’t the best with new people.   
  
“That’s Charlotte.” Delia said, in a way that made Alison think that Monmouth Manufacturing, and the girls that resided in it, were just a tourist stop. A means for Delia to charm her new boyfriend.  
  
Charlotte extended a hand. Kyle took it.  
  
“Dude, your hands freezing.” Kyle said when Charlotte dropped her hand, holding his own to his shirt to warm them.  
  
“I’ve been dead seven years.” Charlotte said, normally. “That’s as warm as they get.”  
  
Charlotte, unlike her pristine room, always seemed a little smudgy. Her clothing was never perfect. Her fair hair seemed to blend into the white headband pulling it away from her face. Her overall unkempt appearance always made Alison feel a little better about his own second-hand uniform. It was hard to feel good about it when Gansey had the crispest shirt you ever did see, and Aidan spent nine hundred dollars on a tattoo to piss off her sister.  
  
Kyle’s chuckle was cut off as Aidan’s bedroom door opened. Delia’s face darkened and looked like it would never light again.   
  
Now, Delia and Aidan Lynch were undeniably sisters. They had the same sharp nose and dark brown hair, but Delia was solid, where Aidan was brittle. Delia’s slim face and bright smile said _vote for me,_ while Aidan’s buzzed head, thin mouth and permanently smudged eyeliner warned that you should run.  
  
“Aidan.” Delia said, sounding thoroughly annoyed. When she had called earlier, she had asked, _When will Aidan not be available?_ “I thought you have tennis.”  
  
“You think I’m going to fuckin’ tennis?” Aidan replied.   
  
There was a moment where Delia debated what she wanted to say in front of Kyle, and Aidan enjoyed to uncomfortable silence.   
  
When Delia took too long to speak, Aidan crossed her arms and said. “You’ve got a great gal here Kyle. You’ll have a great night with her. The some other guy can have great night with her tomorrow.” Behind her, Aidan’s door – covered with photocopied versions of her speeding tickets – swung closed.  
  
Kyle’s mouth made an O.  
  
“She’s sorry.” Gansey said.  
  
Kyle slowly closed his mouth. He blinked at Aidan. She had chosen her best and favourite weapon: mean spirited truth.  
  
“My sister is-”Delia started, but she couldn’t finish the sentence. “We’re going to leave now, Aidan. You need reconsider-” once again, she didn’t finish what she started.  
  
Delia caught Kyle’s hand and tugged him toward the door. As they departed, Alison heard the beginning of damage control. _She’s got problems, I tried to tell you. I didn’t think she’d be here. She’s the one that found Dad and it messed her up for life. Let’s get Chinese tonight. I’ll pay._  
  
The moment the door closed, Gansey said. “Come on, Aidan.”  
  
Aidan said nothing. Her strict moral code left no room for infidelity, even in casual relationships. No one can quite figure out what the moral code _is,_ but that’s beside the point.   
  
“So she sleeps around. It’s not your problem.” Gansey said. Aidan wasn’t Gansey’s problem either, but yet again, that’s beside the point.   
  
One of Aidan’s eyebrows raised, sharp as a razor.  
  
Gansey strung her journal closed. “You know that doesn’t work on me. _He_ had nothing to do with you and Delia. You treated him badly and made the rest of us look bad.”  
  
Aidan looked chastised, but Alison knew better than to think she was. Aidan wasn’t apologetic for her behaviour; she was just apologetic for the fact Gansey had caught her.   
  
Gansey ran her thumb over her bottom lip. “Christ. Right, let’s go to Nino’s. We can get pizza and call that psychic. Maybe this whole thing will sort itself out.”  
  
This is why Alison could forgive the glossy, perfect version of Gansey she’d first met. Because of her money, and her family name, because of her pretty smiles and her easy laugh, because she liked people and (despite her worrying) people liked her too. Gansey could have as many friends as she wanted, but instead he had the three of them. Three people who should’ve, for different reasons, been friendless.   
  
“I’m not coming.” Charlotte said.  
  
“Need some alone time?” Aidan asked with a sharp grin.  
  
“Aidan, set your weapons to stun, will you?” Gansey said. “Charlie, we won’t make you eat. Alison?”  
  
Alison looked up. She had been lost in her own thoughts, thinking about how Kyle’s interest in Gansey’s journal had been a little more than casual. Gansey would dismiss her as over-paranoid. But Gansey and Adam longed for Glendower for different reasons.   
  
Gansey longed for Glendower the way Arthur longed for the grail.   
  
Alison longed for Glendower because she needed that favour. Which meant that they needed to wake Glendower first.   
  
“Parrish.” Gansey pleaded. “Come on.”  
  
Alison made a face. “It’ll take more than pizza to improve Lynch’s manners.”  
  
Aidan snorted.   
  
“Play nice.” Gansey said, grabbing the keys to the Pig and stepping around her miniature Henrietta. Even though Aidan was snarling, Charlotte was sighing and Alison was hesitating, she didn’t need to verify that they were coming with. She knew that they all were. When it came down to Gansey, they’d follow her anywhere and everywhere.   
  
“ _Excelsior_.” Said Gansey, and shut the door behind them.”


	5. the morning rain clouds up my window, and I can't see at all

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're missing Whelk chapter because whelk, and i cannot stress this enough, SUCKS ASS
> 
> also, these are the songs I've used for chapter titles-  
> Be (Hozier)  
> What Difference Does It Make?(The Smiths)  
> Dreams (Lissie)  
> When The World Was At War We Just Kept Dancing (Lana Del Ray)  
> Stan (Eminem)
> 
> all the songs are on my playlist, eloquently titles "the raven boys" (it has fanart of ronans tattoo as the cover)

Blue wouldn’t _really_ describe himself as a waiter. After all, he was multitalented. He also walked dogs, potted plants for old ladies, taught penmanship to third graders and made wreaths for his neighbours.  
  
Really, waiting at Nino’s was the least of all the things he did. Yet, it was the most-legit looking entry on his resume, the hours were flexible and it paid the best.  
  
There was only one glaring problem with Nino’s –aside from the fact it was greasy from roof to floor- and that was that it all but belonged to Raven Girls. The Aglionby girls who came to Nino’s were by far the most Aglionby of the lot. Loud, entitled, pushy.  
  
Blue had seen enough Raven Girls to last a lifetime.  
  
He paralysed the outer edges of his personality, tuned out the ear-drum bursting NSYNC blaring from the speakers, tied his apron and put on his tip-earning smile.  
  
Close to the start of his shift, four Raven Girls entered. The girl in front was holding up four fingers to indicate to Corey how big they wanted their table, while simultaneously holding a cell phone to her ear. Blue had found out that Raven Girls were very good at multitasking if both tasks were beneficial to themselves.   
  
Corey hurried by, apron pockets stuffed with tickets, to grab four greasy menus.   
  
Unwillingly, Blue asked. “Do you want me to take them?”  
  
“You kidding?” Corey replied. “They’re loaded.”  
  
Having ended her call, the first one slid into the booth. The tallest one – she had to be nearly six foot. This, to Blue, didn’t seem fair because he was barely five foot- knocked her head on the lamp. The others laughed. She cursed quite colourfully at them, then sat down. The dark outline of a tattoo was visible through the tin material of her shirt, a shadow and nothing more.   
  
Blue didn’t want them anyway.  
  
Barely ten minutes into his shift, the manager signalled for Blue from the kitchen. Tonight it was Danielle. Nino’s had a dozen or so managers, none of which were high school graduates.   
  
Danielle offered Blue the phone. “Your parent. Uh, your mother.”  
  
Blue nodded, though there was no need to clarify which parent, because Blue didn’t know who his other parent was. When he had asked Maura, she always changed the subject.   
  
Blue plucked the phone from Danielle’s hand and settled against the wall.  
  
“Mom, I’m working.” He said by way of greeting.  
  
“Don’t panic.”  
  
“I wasn’t planning on it?”  
  
“Are you sitting? Maybe you should sit. Or at least lean on something. Anyway, she called. To schedule a reading.”  
  
“You’re going to need to be more specific. And louder. Be more loud, and more specific. Who scheduled a reading?”  
  
“ _Gansey._ ” Maura said, almost yelling down the phone line.  
  
Blue felt his heart plummet to the soles of his feet.  
  
“When.... when’s it scheduled?”  
  
“Tomorrow afternoon. That was the quickest I could get her in. I tried to get her in earlier, but she had school.” Maura paused. “Do you have a shift tomorrow?”  
  
“Not anymore.” Blue said, making a mental note to talk to Danielle.  
  
“Good. Get back to work.”  
  
As Blue hooked the phone back on the wall, he could feel is pulse fluttering in his ears. It was real. She was real.   
  
Blue didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be lying by the cool beech tree in her backyard, trying to decipher the new meaning of his life. Neeve had said that this was the year Blue would fall in love. Maura (and every other psychic he’d ever met) had said that if he kissed his true love, she’d die. Gansey was supposed to die this year. It couldn’t be a coincidence, right? Gansey had to be his true love, because there was no way in hell he was going to kill someone in another way.  
  
Something touched her shoulder.  
  
Touching was strictly off limits. Especially at Nino’s, and especially when he was having a bit of a meltdown. He whirled on his heel.  
  
“Can. I. Help. You?” He ground out through his teeth.  
  
Before him stood the multitasking cell phone Aglionby, looking tidy and presidential. Every area of exposed skin was a lovely shade of tan, and her earring looked like they cost more than his mothers car.   
  
“I certainly hope so.” She said pleasantly, but in a way that emphasised _certainly_ more than it did _hope_. Very aggravatingly, Blue had to look up to meet her eyes. She gave off a certain air of tallness, though she couldn’t be more than five foot six. “My socially inhibited friend, Alison, thinks your attractive but is too shy to make a move. Over there. Not the smudgy one, and not the sulky one.”  
  
Blue, only out of curiosity, looked at the orange booth the girl had indicated. Indeed, one was smudgy. She had the distinct air of a person who had been laundered one too many times. The sulky one was apparently the one who had hit her head earlier. She was striking, head shaved, ears pierced a dozen times in each ear. There was a knick through her eyebrow, which looked to be unintentional. The third was elegant. That probably wasn’t the correct word, but it was the closest. She was fine-boned, and slightly fragile. Her blue eyes were _very_ pretty.  
  
Despite all of his instincts, Blue felt a miniscule flutter of interest.  
  
This sort of thing had happed before. Raven Girls thought it would be funny to ask the servers out, just to laugh at them. It had happened once or twice to Blue, but that was probably because he was shorter than most of the girls.   
  
“And?” Blue asked.  
  
“And, I’d like you to do me a favour and talk to her.”   
  
A little pit of anger flared in his stomach at the condescending words. He took one deep breath to cool it, then he said. “What _exactly_ do you think I would talk to her about?”  
  
President Mobile Phone looked unbothered. “I’m sure we can think of something. We’re interesting people.”  
  
Blue had to physically repress a laugh. He highly doubted it. Yet, the elegant girl was looking rather elegant, and rather horrified that his friend was talking to him. Not in a way that she was embarrassed but laughing, she just looked embarrassed. It was a little endearing.  
  
Then he remembered his rules, and the sweaters President Mobile Phone and his friends were wearing  
  
“Do you see this apron?” Blue asked roughly. “It means I work for a living. I don’t have time to frolic about with your friends.”  
  
Yet again, she seemed unbothered. “I’ll take care of it.”  
  
Barely reigning in his anger, Blue echoed. “Take care of it?”  
  
“How much do you make in an hour? I’ll talk to your manger and take care of it.”  
  
Blue had never believed people who claimed to be speechless before, but he did now. Huffing indignantly, he spluttered. “I’m not your entertainment!”  
  
The Aglionby girl looked puzzled, and then realised what Blue meant. “That’s not what I meant. That’s not what I said.”  
  
“That _is_ what you said! You can’t pay me to talk to your friend. I’m not for _hire_.” Indignation had eliminated most functioning thoughts. “Usually, when a guy likes a girl, they talk to them for _free._ ”  
  
To her credit, President Mobile Phone didn’t answer right away. Carefully, she said. “You said you worked for a living. I thought it would be rude to not take this into account. I’m sorry you’re insulted, but I feel like you’re not doing the same for me, and that’s unfair.”  
  
“Well, I _feel_ like you’re being patronising.”  
  
In the background, he caught sight of the girl with the shaved head miming a train wreck while the smudgy girl gulped down laughter. The elegant girl had a delicate hand poised on her forehead, fingers spread wide enough for Blue to see her wince.   
  
“Dear God.” The first Aglionby girl said. “I don’t know what else to say.”  
  
“I’d recommend ‘I’m sorry’” He said.  
  
“I’ve already said that.”  
  
“Well, ‘goodbye’ is a good one.”  
  
She picked up the edges of her skirts and did a mocking little curtsey. Blue resisted the urge to pull a Calla and flip her off, so instead shoved his hands in the pockets of his apron.  
  
President Mobile Phone went back to her table. As she picked up a thick leather journal, the girl with the shaved head let out a howl of a laugh and mimicked “...not your entertainment”. Beside him, the elegant girl ducked her head. Her cheeks and all along the bridge of her nose were bright pink.   
  
_Not for a million dollars,_ Blue thought peevishly _not for two million dollars._  
  
But, he had to admit, the cheek and nose blush didn’t seem to be very... Aglionby. Blue didn’t even know real people blushed like that. He’d seen one of his cousins, by the name of Blossom (he wasn’t the only one in the family with a silly name) do make-up like that, but he hadn’t thought it was possible to do so.  
  
Did Raven Girls get embarrassed?   
  
He had stared a moment too long. The elegant girl raised her head, eyebrows furrowed in remorse. Then she heard the first girls voice, saying _I’ll take care of it._ He shot her a furious look, truly worthy of Calla, and whirled back to the kitchen.  
  
Neeve had been tremendously wrong. There was no way that he’d ever fall in love with one of them.


	6. load up on guns, bring a friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they brawlin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana

“Why exactly,” Gansey asked Alison. “Do you want to go to a psychic?”  
  
The pizzas had been demolished, which made Gansey feel better and Aidan feel worse. By the end of the meal, Aidan had picked off all her moving-dolly scabs, and probably would’ve picked off Alison’s as well if she would’ve let her. Gansey sent her outside to blow off steam, and sent Charlotte to chaperone.   
  
Alison in Gansey now stood in line while some woman harassed a waiter about something to do with mushrooms.  
  
“They deal with energy work.” Alison said, scratching at where she’d picked her own scab off, and peering over her shoulder, probably looking for the evil _not-your-entertainment_ waiter. Part of Gansey felt guilty for messing up any chance Alison had. Then again, she didn’t feel too guilty, because the waiter looked the type to rip out spinal cords and devour them.  
  
It was entirely possible, Gansey thought, that she’d been oblivious about money. She hadn’t _meant_ to be offensive, but in hindsight, she probably had been. This was going to annoy her all night. She vowed, like she had done hundreds of times, to consider her words before she said them.  
  
Alison continued. “The ley lines are energy. Energy and energy. Maybe they know something.”  
  
“Matchy matchy.” Gansey said. “That is, if the psychic is real.”  
  
“Beggars can’t be choosers.” Alison told her.  
  
Gansey looked at the pizza ticket she’d been given. Apparently, their waiter thought that they’d want the number of one of the other waiters. It was hard to tell which one of the four they wanted to attract. _He_ clearly hadn’t thought Gansey was condescending.   
  
She said, “I wish we knew how wide the lines were. I don’t know whether we’re looking for a thread or a highway. After all this time.”  
  
Alison might break her neck from all the looking around she’s doing. Maybe then the spine-devouring waiter might not want her. Speaking of the waiter, there wasn’t a sign of him. Alison looked tired. Gansey hated seeing her like that, but nothing she thought of sounded like something she could say to her. Alison wouldn’t tolerate pity.  
  
“They can be dowsed, so they can’t be that narrow.” Alison said, rubbing her palms against her temple.  
  
 _I could tell her that her grades will drop if she doesn’t get more sleep_ , Gansey thought. Alison wouldn’t take pity or charity, so Gansey needed to phrase it selfishly. _You won’t be any use to me if you get mono or something_. Alison would see through that in a second.  
  
“We need point A,” Gansey said instead. “Before we get to point B.”  
  
In truth, they had both point A and point B. The only problem was that the points were far too large. Most of the maps Gansey had from other ley line hunters merely said New York City, Washington D.C and Pilot Mountain in North Carolina as possible reference points. That left them with thousands of acres were Glendower could be, if he was on the ley line at all.  
  
“I wonder.” Alison mused. “If we could, like, electrify either the rods or the line. Hook up a battery or something.”  
  
Gansey said. “That sounds like the beginning of a torture session. Maybe the end of a music video.”  
  
Alison’s searching-for-devil-waiter face had morphed into her brilliant-idea face.”Amplification is what I was thinking. Something to make it louder and easier to follow.”  
  
It wasn’t a terrible idea. Gansey had once met a girl who was struck by lightning, and left with a terrible fear of the indoors and a preternatural affinity for following ley lines. Gansey had tried to convince the girl to join her on the east coast, but the pathological fear of the indoors meant she couldn’t go via car or plane travel. Montana to Virginia was an awfully long walk.  
  
It wasn’t a useless adventure, though, for it proved what Alison was saying now. Ley lines and electricity could be linked. Energy and energy.  
  
Matchy matchy.  
  
Gansey stepped up to the counter and became aware of Charlotte hovering by her elebow. She looked strained and urgent. Neither of these were particularly new things for Charlotte, so Gansey handed over a folded stack of notes, not quite alarmed.   
  
Charlotte continued to hover.  
  
“Charlotte, what is it?” Gansey demanded.  
  
Charlotte went to shove her arms around her pocket, and then thought better of it and dropped her arms. Her hands seemed to belong less places then other peoples did. “Delia’s here.”  
  
Gansey scanned the restaurant, and when it didn’t wield any results, asked. “Where?”  
  
“Car park.” Charlotte said. “She and Aidan-”  
  
She didn’t need the rest of the sentence. Gansey tore out into the black evening. She skidded to a stop just in time to watch Aidan throw a punch.  
  
The arch of her arm was infinite.   
  
Aidan’s stance was unbreakable, her expression harder than granite. There was no wavering in the line of her blow. Whatever the consequences of her actions, she’d already accepted them.  
  
From her father, Gansey had got a head for logic, affection for meticulous research and the largest trust fund you ever did see.  
  
From their father, the Lynch sister had got incredibly inflated egos, obscure Irish instrument lessons and the ability to box like they meant it. Niall Lynch had not been around long, but when he was alive he was an excellent teacher.   
  
“ _Aidan!”_ Gansey shouted, too late.   
  
Delia went down, but she was back up again a split second later, her fist smacking into her sister. Aidan released a string of profanities so varied it and pointed, Gansey was surprised it didn’t kill Delia on impact. Aidan’s knee met Delia’s chest. Delia’s elbow rammed into Aidan’s face. The, using the back of her Blazer, Aidan slammed Delia into the mirror-like hood of her Volvo.   
  
“Not the fucking car!” Delia yelled, her lip split.  
  
The story of the Lynch family was this: once upon a time, a man named Niall Lynch had three daughters with his wife Aurora Lynch. One of these daughters loved their father more than the others. One day, the charismatic, handsome, rich Niall Lynch was dragged from his charcoal-grey BMW and beaten to death with a tyre iron. The day after, his daughter Aidan found the body in the driveway. The day after that, Aurora Lynch stopped speaking, and never spoke. The next day, the Lynch sisters found themselves homeless, per their fathers will.   
  
Ripping Aidan from the Volvo, Delia hit her hard enough that even Gansey felt it. Kyle, all wide-eyes, blinked at her from inside the Volvo.   
  
Gansey took a few purposeful strides forward. “Aidan!”  
  
She didn’t even turn her head. She was wearing a grim smile, reminiscent of a skeleton more than a girl. This wasn’t a fight for show. This was a fight with one intention: hurt. It played in fast-forward. Someone could be unconscious before Gansey could cry out, and she really didn’t have enough time to take anyone to the ER tonight.   
  
Gansey smoothly seized Aidan’s arm, mid-swing. Delia’s fist was still flying, and so Gansey got the blow instead. She swore, which was something she’d learned from Aidan.   
  
Aidan had her sister by the front of her blouse, and Delia gripped the back of Aidan’s skull with a white-knuckled hand. With a neat flick, Aidan sent her sister’s head into the Volvos door with a wet crunching sound. Delia’s hand fell away.  
  
Gansey seized her opportunity to propel Aidan six feet away. Jerking in her grip, Aidan pressed into the arm restraining her. She was incredibly strong.  
  
“Stop it.” Gansey said breathily. “You’re ruining your face.”  
  
Aidan twisted, nothing but muscle and adrenaline. Delia, suit more bedraggled than any suit all to look, started coming towards them again.   
  
Across the car park, the manager of Nino’s emerged. There was only a certain amount of time before the cops got here. _Where’s Alison?_  
  
“Delia,” Gansey said warningly. “If you come back over here, I swear...”  
  
With a jerky movement, Delia split blood onto the tarmac, then wiped her mouth clean. Her lip was still bleeding but her teeth wee blindingly white, as usual. “Fine. She’s your dog, Gansey. Leash her. Keep her from getting kicked out of school. I wash my hands of her.”  
  
“I wish.” Snarled Aidan. Her entire body rigid, stiff with the cruel hatred she wore as a second skin.   
  
Delia said, “You’re such a piece of shit, Aidan. If dad saw-” This made surge forward again. Gansey had to lock both her arms around Aidan’s chest and drag her back.”  
  
“Why are you even _here?_ ” Gansey asked Delia coldly.   
  
“Kyle needed to use the bathroom.” Delia replied crisply. “I can take my boyfriend where I like, can’t I?”  
  
The last time Gansey had used the Nino’s bathroom, it had spelled like vomit and beer. On one of the walls, someone had scrawled ANTI-CHRIST in red sharpie, followed by Aidan’s number. It was a hard thing to imagine, Delia _choosing_ to inflict Nino’s facilities on her boyfriend.   
  
Gansey’s voice was short. “Just leave. This isn’t getting solved tonight.   
  
Delia laughed just once, but it was clear she found nothing funny. “Ask her how she’s getting by on a B this year. Do you even _go_ to class, Aidan?”  
  
Behind Delia, Kyle peered out the driver’s side window. He had rolled down the window to listen in to the conversation.   
  
“I’m not saying you’re wrong.” Gansey said. Her ear was hurting where Delia punched her. She could feel Aidan’s pulse crashing into where she restrained her. Remembering the devil-waiter fiasco, she planned out her words before she said them. “But you aren’t Niall Lynch, nor will you ever be. You’d get ahead a lot faster if you stopped trying.”  
  
Gansey dropped her arms from Aidan’s middle.   
  
Aidan didn’t move, and neither did Delia. It was as if, by saying their fathers name, Gansey had put a spell on them. They wore matching raw expressions. Wounds inflicted by the same weapon.   
  
“I’m only trying to help.” Delia said, but she sounded defeated.   
  
Next to Gansey, Aidan’s hand hung at her sides, fingertips brushing the edge of her skirt. Sometimes, after Alison was hit, there was something absent and Aidan’s eyes, like her body belonged to something else. When she herself was hit, it was an opposite reaction. She became so present, it was as though she’d been sleeping before.  
  
Aidan told her sister. “I’ll never forgive you.”  
  
The Volvo’s window slowly hissed closed, as Kyle realized this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to listen in on.   
  
Delia sucked on her bloody lip. For a slight moment, she looked at the ground. Then she straightened and smoothed her collar.   
  
“It doesn’t mean much from you anymore.”She said, and tugged open the Volvo door.  
  
As she slid into the driver’s seat, Delia said, “I don’t want to talk about it.” To Kyle, who muttered something like “That was hot.”  
  
Delia slammed to door and squealed out of parking lot.   
  
Gansey and Aidan were left alone. Aidan touched her fingers to her eyebrow, checking for blood, but there was nothing but a bump.  
  
“Fix it.” Gansey said, though she wasn’t sure what Aidan had done, or if it was easily fixable. “Don’t let her be right.”  
  
Aidan spoke lowly, just loud enough for Gansey to hear, “I want to quit.”  
  
“One more year.”  
  
“I don’t want to do this _shit_ for one more year, man.” She kicked gravel under the Camaro. Her voice did raise, only in ferocity, though, not volume. “one more year and I get suffocated by a pencil skirt like Delia? I’m not a goddamn politician, Gansey. I’m not some pretty trophy wife, either.”  
  
Neither was Gansey, but that didn’t mean that she wanted to quit. “Just graduate. Please, and then you can do what you want.”  
  
Their trust funds ensured that they never had to work.  
  
Aidan looked angry, but she always did. “I don’t know what I want. I don’t even know who the hell I am.”  
  
She got into the Camaro.  
  
“Your promised.” Gansey said through the open door.   
  
Aidan didn’t look up. “I know.”  
  
She slammed the door. Gansey sighed and then went to join Alison at her safe vantage point. In contrast Aidan and her bruised face, Alison looked clean and self-contained.   
  
“I convinced them not to call the cops.” Alison said. She was very good at down-playing situations.   
  
“Where’s Charlotte?”  
  
“She’s on her way. I think she’s leaving a tip.”  
  
Gansey said, “So. Kyle.”  
  
“ _Kyle_.” Alison said, as if she had been waiting to bring him up.   
  
“Quite some eyes on her.” Gansey said, meaning that he was nosy.  
  
“You really think he’s here for Delia?”  
  
“Why else would he be here?”  
  
“Glendower.” Alison said immediately.   
  
Gansey laughed, but Alison didn’t. “Really, why else?”  
  
Alison was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “I don’t think you should talk about it anymore.”  
  
“It isn’t a secret.”  
  
“Maybe it should be.”  
  
Alison’s paranoia was contagious. Yet, logically, there was nothing to support her superstition. Gansey had been searching for four years, telling everyone she met of her quest, and nothing had happened.   
  
“Everything’s already out there.” Gansey said. “It was too late years ago.”  
  
Alison, with heat, said, “Come on, Gansey! Don’t you feel like... don’t you feel...”  
  
Gansey hated fighting with his friends, and this was feeling dangerously like fighting. “Feel what?”  
  
Alison unsuccessfully tried to put her thoughts into words. Eventually, she struggled out, “ _Observed._ ”  
  
Charlotte finally emerged from Nino’s and slouched towards them. Gansey could see Aidan’s head tilted to the headrest of the Camaro, like she was asleep. The night smelled like mown grass and the chemical that grass releases when it rains after a dry period. Maybe Alison was right. There was something very momentous about the night.   
  
“Do you think there would be any point to someone spying on us,” Gansey said, “If we weren’t on the right track?”


	7. got me on my knees, Layla

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i believe in Blue Sargent breaking gender norms supremacy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from Layla by Eric Clapton

By the time Blue made it outside, all anxiety had ebbed, replaced by weariness. He tipped his head back, sucking in a deep breath, and found constellations in the night sky. Ursa major, Leo, Cepheus.   
  
The chain was cold as he unlocked his bike. He could hear the sound of retreating voices. People truly were the noisiest animals. Oh, how he longed to live in a place where there was no light pollution, where he could step outside and see all the stars in the sky.  
  
“Excuse me? Um, hi.”   
  
The voice was cautious and feminine and local (the vowels all had the edges sanded off) and unfamiliar. Blue turned, sporting a lukewarm expression.  
  
To his surprise, it was Elegant Girl. In the orange glow of a distant streetlamp, her face was gaunter and older looking. She was alone. No President Mobile Phone, no smudgy one, no dangerous one. She had one hand on her bike, the other tucked in her skirt pocket.   
  
_That’s one good thing about Aglionby_ , Blue admitted grudgingly. _At least the skirts have pockets._  
  
Blue had heard the women of Fox Way rant about the absence of pockets in women’s clothing enough that he knew it first hand. In fact, he did know it first hand, because men’s jeans didn’t ft his tiny body, and he had once gone through a phase were he would continuously steal Persephone’s skirts. He sometimes still did, knowing none of the psychics would make fun of him.  
  
Elegant Girl’s unsure posture didn’t track with the raven on her jumper. There was a fray on the edge of her jumper, which she promptly shook under her hair.  
  
“Hi,” Blue said, softer than he would have if he hadn’t noticed the fray. Normal Raven Girls didn’t wear second-hand jumper. “Alison, was it?”  
  
She gave an abashed nod. Blue’s brain finally registered her bike. Normal Raven Girls didn’t ride bikes over driving cars either.   
  
“I was on my way home.” Alison said. “I thought I recognised you. I just wanted to say sorry about what happened earlier. I didn’t ask her to do that and I wanted you to know.”  
  
It didn’t escape Blue that her slightly accented voice was as attractive as her face. He then scolded herself for being shallow enough to only think about her looks. Alison glanced over her shoulder at the sound of a car peeling out of the parking lot. When she turned back, she still wore a wary expression, and Blue saw that this expression – a wrinkle between her eyebrows, tense mouth – was a perfectly fitted one, as if she wore it often.   
  
“That’s nice of you.” He said. “But you’re not the one who needs to apologise.”  
  
“I can’t let her take all the blame. I _did_ want to talk to you. But I didn’t want to, like, pick you up.”  
  
This was where he ought to brush her off. Yet, here he was, enamoured by her blush; her honest expression; the newly minted, uncertain smile. Her face was just haunting enough that Blue wanted to look at it more.   
  
He’d never been flirted with by someone who he wanted to succeed at it.   
  
He asked, “What did you want to do?”  
  
“Talk.” She said. In her accent, it sounded less like _speak_ and more like _confess._ “I guess I could’a just asked you myself. Other people’s ideas always get me in more trouble.”  
  
Blue was just about to tell her about how Orla’s ideas got everyone in trouble, when he realized that she would say something else and then he would reply, and it would go on forever. This was someone that he could have a full blown conversation with. Out of no where, Maura’s voice said _I don’t have to tell you not to kiss anyone, right?_  
  
And just like that, Blue was done. He was, as Neeve had pointed out, a very sensible teen, and this didn’t seem like a sensible decision.   
  
“It wasn’t what she said. It was that she offered me money.” He said, putting a foot on his bike’s pedal.   
  
Alison sighed heavily. “She doesn’t get it. She’s stupid about money.”  
  
“And you aren’t?”  
  
She just levelled him with a steady look that left no room for folly.  
  
“Are coming back to Nino’s?” Blue asked.  
  
“Am I invited?”  
  
Blue smiled in response. It seemed like a dangerous thing to do, something that Maura wouldn’t approve of. It wasn’t like his two rules applied to Alison.   
  
“Give me your hand.” He said, fumbling for a pen in his pocket.  
  
“Why?” Alison asked, but complied.  
  
Blue, heart racing, wrote the number for 300 Fox Way on the back of her hand. As he did so, he could feel Alison’s pulse thrumming under his fingertips. “That’s my number.”  
  
Alison only said, “I’m glad I came back.” And began to squeak her bike back the way she’d come.   
  
_I gave a girl my number.  
  
I gave a _Raven Girl _my number.  
  
_ Blue pressed a palm to his face, thinking of future arguments with his mother. _Giving her my number does not mean I’m gonna kiss her._  
  
Blue half-jumped out of his skin when the rear door of the diner opened. It was only Danielle though, expression clearing when she saw him. In her hands she held a tantalising, fat leather journal. Blue knew that journal. He had seen it in President Mobile Phone’s hands.   
  
“Do you know who left this behind?” Danielle asked. “Is it yours?”  
  
Meeting her halfway across the lane, he accepted the journal and flicked it open. The page it opened to was a mishmash of yellowed newspaper and book clippings, notes in red pen for commentary, and a jotted box, neatly entitled “Welsh-influenced place names near Henrietta.”  
  
“I didn’t really read it.” Danielle said. “I just wanted to see if there was a name or something. But I saw what it was and, uh – well, it’s your stuff.”  
  
By that, she meant it was something expected of a psychics son.   
  
“I think I know who it belongs to.” Blue said. He had no more thoughts other than wanting to continue to look through its pages. “I’ll take it.”  
  
Danielle went back inside, and Blue flipped the journal back over. The sheer density of it was truly impressive. Even if the content hadn’t caught his eye, the feel of it would’ve. It wouldn’t stay journal-shaped unless it was tied closed with leather wrappings. Pages upon pages were devoted to ripped excerpts; full of creamy artist’s paper filled with elegant script; thin brown paper with spidery writing; slick white stock with a scrawled modern font; ragged edged newspaper, brittle and yellow.  
  
Notes were made in a million shades of notes and markers, but all of them were made in the same neat, business-like font. They circled and underlined. They made bullet point lists and exclamation points. They contradicted each other and referred to each other in third person. They were doodles of cross hatching that becomes mountains that becomes tyre tracks.  
  
It took him a while to figure out what the journal was _actually_ about, caught up in the novelty of it. It was organised into rough sections, but the owner must’ve run out of room and continued later on. There was a section on ley lines, invisible energy lines that connected spiritual places. There was a section on Owen Glendower, the Raven King. There was a section on the legends of sleeping knights. There were sections on sacrificed kings, ancient Greek water spirits, and all the things ravens represent.   
  
More than anything the journal wanted. It wanted more than the scrawled lines and hasty notes could ever express. It loved and was loved. There was something so incredibly pained and melancholy about the whole thing.  
  
A familiar symbol stood out from the midst of the other doodles. Three intersecting lines to form a rounded triangle. Throughout the whole journal, the owner had doodled the little symbol many times, with no explanation. It was the same shape that Neeve had drawn in the graveyard dust on the day of the church watch.   
  
It couldn’t be a coincidence.   
  
There was absolutely no way that this beautiful journal could belong to that presidential raven girl.   
  
_Maybe it belongs to Alison’s._ He thought.  
  
She gave Blue the same sensation as the journal did – the sense of magic, of pure possibility, of anxious dangerous. It was the same feeling he had got when Neeve said that the spirit touched her hair.   
  
He thought, _I wish you had been Gansey,_ and then immediately regretted it. Whoever Gansey was, she didn’t have long to live.


	8. the world will never, ever be the same

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> phone calls and ravens and churches oh my

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from Hey There Delilah by The Plain White T's

Gansey woke in the middle of the night to find moonlight on her face and her phone ringing.   
  
She fumbled around in the blankets to find where it was nestled. She held it a few centimetres away from her eyes because she was without glasses and contacts. The caller ID read: A. Malory. Gansey now understood the strange timing of the call. Dr Anna Malory lived in Sussex which was a five hour time difference from Henrietta. Malory was one of the prime authorities of British ley lines. She was either eighty or two hundred years old. They had met the summer Gansey had been flitting between Wales and London. She was the first to take fifteen-year-old Gansey seriously, something she will forever be grateful for.   
  
“Gansey.” Malory said warmly, knowing better than to call her by her first name. With no more preamble, she launched into a pretty one-sided conversation about the weather, how frustrating her neighbour with the sheep dog was, and the historical society’s past four meeting. Gansey only understood three quarters of the monologue.  
  
Malory was very hard to understand. Gansey was good with accents, but this wasn’t the issue. Malory spoke with a combination of slurring, chewing, extreme age, poor breeding and bad phone connection, all of which were rather revolting to listen to.  
  
Gansey moved into a sitting position, half out of the bed and half in it. She waited for a polite twelve minutes before gently saying. “It’s nice of you to call.”  
  
“I found a very interesting textual source.” Malory said, lips smacking together horribly. “Which suggested the ley lines are sleeping. Dormant. Sound familiar?”  
  
“Like Glendower! What does that mean?”  
  
“It might explain why they’re so hard to dowse. If they’re sleeping, then the energy would be very faint and irregular.”  
  
Gansey retrieved a tube of glue and some cardboard shingles and sat next to her Henrietta model. “Did your source say anything about waking the ley lines? If Glendower can be woken, then so can the lines, right?”  
  
“That’s the thought.”  
  
“Although, all it takes to wake Glendower is discovery and people have been trampling all over the ley lines.”  
  
“That’s where you’re mistaken, Miss Gansey. The spirit roads are underground. Even if they weren’t at one point, they’re covered by centuries worth of dirt.” Malory said. “No one has _really_ touched them for hundreds of years.”  
  
Gansey recalled how the trail had seemed to come to and fro for no reason while she and Alison dowsed the lines. Malory’s theory indeed sat in the ring of possibility, and that was all she needed. She wanted nothing more than to start scouring her vast piles of books for something to back up the claim, school day be damned. She felt a rare stab of resentment toward Aglionby, then wondered if this was how Aidan always felt.  
  
“OK, so they’re underground. Caves, maybe?”   
  
“Dreadful things, caves.” Malory replied. “Do you have any idea how many people die in caves each year.”  
  
Gansey assured her that she was sure she didn’t.  
  
“Thousands.” Malory said conversationally. “Big graveyards. Better to stay aboveground. No, this source was all about the ritual to wake the spirit roads from the surface. You’d do a symbolic laying of hands on the energy there if Marianna.”  
  
“Henrietta.”  
  
“Texas?”  
  
Gansey had found that a lot of British people assumed anywhere southern was Texas. She said, “Virginia.”  
  
“Right.” Agreed Malory warmly. “It’d be easier to follow the ley line if its shouting rather than whispering. You find it, perform the ritual, find your king.”  
  
When Malory said it, it sounded inevitable.   
  
_find your king  
  
_ Gansey closed her eyes to calm her jumping pulse. She saw a dimly lit image of a king in repose, hands folded over his chest, a sword by his right side, a cup by his left. This was so dizzyingly important to Gansey in a way that she couldn’t even begin to understand or shape. It was something more, something bigger, something that well and truly mattered. No price tag. Something earned.  
  
“The next text wasn’t quite clear on how to perform the ritual.” Malory admitted. She rambled for a minute about the vagaries of historical texts. Gansey paid little attention until she said “I’m going to try it on the Lockyer road. I’ll let you know how it goes.”  
  
“Fantastic.” Gansey said. “I can’t thank you enough.”  
  
“Give my regards to your mother.”  
  
“I wi-”  
  
Malory had launched into a story about how lucky Gansey was to have her mother, and the government’s failure to cure her own mothers throat cancer. Gansey had heard this story, so only half-listened. Malory was quite cheerful by the time the line went dead.  
  
Now Gansey felt infected by the chase; she needed to talk to someone before the quest ate her alive. Alison would’ve been best, but the odds were good that Aidan, who swung wildly between insomnia and hypersomnia, would be awake.  
  
She only made it halfway to Aidan’s room before the thought struck her that it was empty. Standing in the dark doorway, Gansey whispered Aidan’s name, and then, when that turned about no response, said it out loud.  
  
Aidan’s room wasn’t to be intruded on, but Gansey did so anyway. The bed was unmade, the blankets thrown aside with the speed of Aidan’s departure. Gansey hammered on Charlotte’s door, and fumbled to ring Aidan’s phone with the other hand. It rang once then said “Aidan Lynch” followed by a beep.  
  
Gansey cut the recording mid-word, her pulse battering against the inside of her neck. For a long second, Gansey internally debated, then dialled another number. This time it was Alison’s voice, low with sleep and caution, that answered. “Gansey?”  
  
“Aidan’s gone.”  
  
Alison was quiet. It wasn’t that Aidan had just vanished; it was that she had vanished after a fight with Delia. Still, it wasn’t an easy thing to leave the Parrish household in the middle of the night. The consequence of getting caught would leave physical evidence and it was getting too warm for long sleeves. Gansey felt utterly wretched asking this of her.   
  
“I’ll check the park.” Alison whispered after a pregnant pause. “And, uh, the bridge.”  
  
Alison hung up so softly that it took Gansey a moment to realise the connection was broken. She pressed her fingers to her eyelids, which was how Charlotte found her.  
  
“You’re going to look for her?” Charlotte asked. She looked very pale and very insubstantial in the late yellow light of the room behind her. The skin beneath her eyes was shades darker than the rest of her face. She very much looked more like the suggestion of Charlotte. “You should check the church.”  
  
She didn’t say she was coming, nor did Gansey ask her to. Six months ago, the only time it mattered, Charlotte had found Aidan in a pool of her own blood, so she was exempt from having to look ever again. Charlotte hadn’t gone to the hospital, and Alison had been caught trying to sneak back in, so it had just been Gansey with Aidan when they sewed her skin closed.  
  
Sometimes, Gansey thought her life was actually made up of a dozen hours she would never forget.  
  
Pulling on her jacket, she headed into the chilly car park. The hood of Aidan’s BMW was cold, so it hadn’t been driven recently. Wherever she’d gone, she’d walked there. The church and Nino’s were both within walking distance. So was the bridge  
  
She started to walk. Her brain was trying to be logical, but her traitorous heart stuttered beat to beat. She wasn’t naive; she knew she’d never recover the Aidan Lynch that Aidan had been before her father died. She just didn’t want to lose the Aidan Lynch she had now.   
  
Despite the unusually strong moonlight, the entrance to St. Agnes was shrouded in complete darkness. Shivering, Gansey pulled on the great iron knocker, unsure whether or not it would be unlocked. She had only been here once, on Easter, because Aidan’s younger sister, Lanis, had asked them all to come.   
  
She wouldn’t have assumed this was a place Aidan would come in the middle of the night; then again, she wouldn’t have pegged Aidan for religious at all. Yet, all three Lynch sisters went to church every Sunday, and for an hour they managed to sit next to each other without a fight ensuing.  
  
As she stepped through the arch, she thought _Charlotte’s very good at finding things_ and hoped the fact applied to this situation as well.  
  
The church enveloped Gansey in an incense-scented bubble of air.  
  
“Aidan?” The word was sucked into the surroundings and echoed off the tall ceiling.  
  
Darkness and uncertainty crushed Gansey’s lungs, awfully reminding her of another long summer day. The day she first realised magic existed.  
  
And there was Aidan, longly stretched out on one of the shadowed pews, an arm hanging off the edge, her body just a bit of black in an already black world. She wasn’t moving.  
  
Gansey thought, _Not tonight. Please, please not tonight.  
  
_ She edged to the pew behind Aidan and put her hand on the other girl’s shoulder, as if she could wake her that easily. If she could wake her at all.   
  
Her shoulder was warm to touch. She smelled of whiskey.  
  
“Wake up, dude.” She said. The words were by no means light, but she had meant for them to be.  
  
Aidan’s shoulder shifted and her face turned. For a horrible, unchained moment, Gansey thought that Aidan was already dead and her corpse had only woken because she had commanded it to. Then Aidan’s brilliant blue eyes opened, and the moment dissipated.   
  
Gansey sighed. “You bitch.”  
  
Very plainly, Aidan said. “I couldn’t dream.” Her eyes narrowed at Gansey’s stricken expression. “I promised you it wouldn’t happen again.  
  
Gansey tried to keep her voice light, but failed. “You’re a liar.”  
  
“I think,” Aidan replied, “you’re mistaking me for my sister.”  
  
The church was quiet all around them. It seemed brighter now that Aidan was awake, as if the building had been asleep to.   
  
“When I said I didn’t want you getting drunk at Monmouth, it didn’t mean I wanted you drunk somewhere else.”  
  
Slightly slurring her words, Aidan responded, “Pot calling the kettle black.”  
  
With dignity, Gansey said. “I drink. I don’t get drunk.”  
  
Aidan rolled her eyes and then dropped them to something she held near her chest.  
  
“What’s that?” Gansey asked.  
  
Next to her chest, Aidan’s fingers curled around a dark object. When Gansey bent over to uncurl her fingers, she felt something alive, a little rapid pulse against her fingertips. She snatched her hand back.  
  
“Christ,” She said. “Is that a bird?”  
  
Aidan sat up, trying not to jostle her cargo. Her breath, alcohol-laced and harsh, permeated the air.  
  
“Raven.” There was a pause as Aidan studied her hand. Or rather, the creature in it. “Maybe a crow. I doubt it, though. I...uh, yeah, seriously doubt it. _Corvus corax._ ”  
  
Even while drunk, she know the Latin name for the common raven.  
  
And it wasn’t just a raven, Gansey saw. It was just a baby, featherless mouth still a baby’s mouth, wings still too frail to fly. She wasn’t sure whether or not to touch something so easily breakable.  
  
Glendower was the Raven King. He had legends surrounding him being able to speak to the birds, and vice versa. It was one of few reasons Gansey being in Henrietta, a town known for its reasons. She rubbed a hand down her arm, the hairs there standing on end.   
  
“Where did it come from?”  
  
Aidan’s pale fingers were a compassionate cage around the thing. It didn’t look real in her hands. “I found it.”  
  
“People don’t _find_ birds. People find pennies, or car keys, or four-leaf clovers.” Gansey replied.  
  
“And ravens.” Aidan said. “You’re just jealous ‘cause”- at this point she had to re-group her sluggish thoughts-“you didn’t find one as well.”  
  
“What if I implement a no-pets policy at the apartment?”  
  
“Well hell, Gansey.” Aidan said, smile as savage as ever. “You can’t just throw out Charlie like that.”  
  
It took Gansey a minute to realise Aidan had made a joke, and by that time it was too late to laugh. In any case, she knew she was going to have to allow the bird at Monmouth, because she saw the possessive way Aidan held it, and the birds dependant gaze.   
  
Gansey relented, annoyed. “Come on. We’re going back. Get up.”  
  
Gansey let her hands hover as Aidan got unsteadily to her feet. The raven hunched over in her hands and Aidan let out her drunk laugh – one bark of laughter, with no emotion aside from spite – “Get used to some turbulence, you little bitch.”  
  
“You can’t name it that.”  
  
“Her name’s Chainsaw.” Replied Aidan as if this should be obvious. Then, without looking up, she called. “Charlie, you’re creepy as shit back there.”  
  
In the shadowed entrance of the church, Charlotte stood silently. For a second, all that was visible of her was her pale face; dark clothes invisible and her eyes chasms into some unknown place. Then she stepped into the light and she was as rumpled and familiar as ever.  
  
“I thought you weren’t coming.” Gansey said.  
  
She said, with typical bravery, “the apartment was creepy with no-one in it.”  
  
“Freak.” Aidan remarked, to the unconcern of Charlotte.  
  
Gansey pulled open the church door. Guilt for calling Alison about a false alarm was already setting in. Although, she wasn’t entirely sure something didn’t go on. She wasn’t sure what it was but _something_ had happened. “Where did you say you found the bird again?”  
  
“In my head.” Aidan said, again with her drunk laugh. It echoed off the church walls.  
  
“Dangerous place.” Commented Charlotte.  
  
Aidan stumbled and laughed again. All her edges were blunted by alcohol. The raven in her hand let out a feeble sound of indignation. “Not for Chainsaw.”  
  
Outside the church, Gansey tipped her head back. Now that she knew Aidan was ok, she revelled in the beauty of Henrietta after dark.   
  
A _raven,_ of all the birds for Aidan to find.  
  
Gansey didn’t believe in coincidences.


	9. there is no sweeter innocence then our gentle sin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Persephone :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Church by Hozier

One hour and 42 minutes before Blue’s alarm was supposed to go off, he was awoken by the front door closing. He tried very hard to not to resent whoever had closed the door for making him miss sleep.  
  
Footsteps started up the staircase. Blue thought he heard the sound of his mother’s voice.   
  
“...was up waiting for you.”  
  
“Some things are better done at night.” This was Neeve. Although she was speaking quieter than Maura, her voice was crisper and carried well. “Henrietta is quite a place, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t ask you to look at Henrietta.” Maura replied in a protective stage-whisper.   
  
“It’s difficult not to. It’s rather loud.” Neeve said. Her next words were drowned out by a creaking stair.  
  
Maura’s reply was almost lost as well as she too began to climb the stairs. “I would prefer if you left Blue out of this.”  
  
Blue went still.   
  
Neeve said. “I’m only telling you what I’m finding. If he vanished at the same time... well, it’s possible that the events are linked. Do not want him to know?”  
  
Another stair groaned. Blue thought, _why can’t they talk without walking up the stairs?  
  
_ Maura snapped. “I don’t see how that would be better or easier for anyone.”  
  
Neeve murmured a reply.   
  
“This is getting out of hand.” Maura said. “It was barely more than typing his name into a search engine, and now...”  
  
Blue strained to hear more. There was only one person who used masculine pronouns that Maura knew, and that was Blue.  
  
It was possible, Blue thought, that Maura meant Blue’s father. No conversation with her mother had gotten him any information, just nonsensical replies meant to be humorous, ( _He’s Santa Claus. He’s a world renowned bank robber. He’s currently on Mars.)_ that changed every time Blue asked. In his head, Blue liked to imagine that he was some superhero figure who had vanished because of a tragic past. He liked to imagine his father watching him over the back-garden fence, proudly watching his strange son stargaze under the beech tree.  
  
Blue was quite fond of his father, considering he had never met the man.  
  
Somewhere, a door closed. There was, once again, the kind of night-time silence that was difficult to disturb. Blue reached over to the plastic bin that served as a bedside table and retrieved the journal. The cool leather of the front was smooth.  
  
 _Henrietta is quite a place,_ Neeve had said. The journal seemed to agree. A place for what, he wasn’t sure.  
  
___  
  
Blue didn’t mean to fall asleep, but that’s what he did, for another hour and a half. It wasn’t the alarm that woke him this time, either. It was one single thought shouting at him.  
  
 _Gansey comes for her reading today._  
  
The conversation between Neeve and Maura seemed very commonplace, when thought about during the flurry of getting ready of school. The journal was still magical, though, sat on the end of his bed. Blue touched one of the quotes, about sleeping kings and favours.  
  
He closed the pages. It felt as though a taller, more adventurous Blue was about to bust out of the shorter, more sensible, current Blue. For a long moment he let the journal sit on his legs, the cover cool against his palms.  
  
A favour.  
  
If he had a favour, what he ask for? For money to be no trouble> To know his father> To travel the world? To see as his mother saw?  
  
 _Gansey comes for her reading today.  
  
What will she be like?  
  
_Maybe, if he was standing above that sleeping king, he’d ask to save Gansey’s life.  
  
“Blue! You better be awake!” Orla screamed from downstairs. Blue needed to get out of the house soon if he wanted to make the bike ride to school. In a few weeks, it would be an incredibly warm ride.  
  
Maybe he would ask the sleeping king for a car.   
  
_I wish I could just skip class today.  
  
_ It wasn’t that Blue dreaded high school. It just felt like...holding a pattern. He wasn’t bullied – it hadn’t taken him long to figure out that if he made all the other kids realise that he wasn’t like them from day one, the less likely he was to be picked on or ignored. The fact was, by the time he got to high school, his oddities meant that people _wanted_ to be friends with him. Blue could’ve had dozens of friends because of baggy, layered clothes and floppy hair. It wasn’t that he hadn’t tried, it’s just that the problem with being weird, is that everyone else is normal.  
  
And so, his family remained his closest friends, school remained a boring chore and Blue still secretly hoped that there were other odd people like him.   
  
“BLUE!” Orla bellowed again. “SCHOOL!”  
  
Blue held the journal to his chest and headed toward the red door at the end of the hall. He had to pass the frenzy in the Phone/Sewing/Cat room and the battle for the bathroom. The room behind the red door belonged to one of Maura’s two best friends, Persephone. The door was slightly open, but Blue knocked anyway. Persephone was a poor but energetic sleeper, and her kicking and shouting but her in the same box as Blue: people who don’t have to share a room. It also meant that she slept whenever possible, and Blue didn’t want to wake her.   
  
Persephone’s small, breathy voice said, “It’s available. I mean, it’s open.”  
  
Blue pushed the door open and found Persephone sitting cross-legged at the card table by the window. When interrogated, people remembered Persephone’s hair first: a long, wavy, white-blonde mane that fell to the back of her thighs. If they got past her hair, they remembered her dresses: elaborate, frothy creations or quizzical smocks. Then, if they got past that, they remembered her unsettling, pure mirror black eyes.  
  
Currently, Persephone held a pencil in a child-like grip. When she saw Blue she frowned in a pointy way.  
  
“Good morning.” Blue said.  
  
“Good morning.” Persephone echoed. “It’s too early. None of my words are working, so I’ll just try to use yours.”

  
She twirled a hand vaguely. Blue took that as a sign to find a place to sit. Most of the bed were covered in clothes, but Blue found a place to perch. The whole room smelled familiar, like oranges and baby powder and new textbooks.  
  
“Sleep badly?” Blue asked.  
  
“Badly.” Persephone echoed again. Then, “That’s not quite true. I’ll have to use my own words after all.”  
  
“What are you working on?”   
  
Persephone was usually working on her eternal PhD, but because that process usually required a lot of snacks and loud, vexing music, she didn’t do it during the morning rush.  
  
“Just a little something.” Persephone said sadly. Or maybe thoughtfully. Sometimes it was hard to tell, and Blue didn’t want to ask. Persephone had a lover who was dead overseas – it was always difficult to get details when it came to Persephone – and she seemed to miss them, or at least notice that they’re gone, which was notable for Persephone. Again, Blue didn’t want to ask. From Maura, he has inherited a strong dislike for watching people cry, and so wanted to avoid any conversations that might end in tears.  
  
Persephone tilted her paper up so Blue could see. She’d merely written the word _three_ three times, in three different handwritings, and then copied down a recipe for banana cream pie.  
  
“Important things come in threes?” Blue suggested. It was his mothers favourite saying.  
  
Persephone underlined a few random words in the recipe. Her voice was far away when she said. “or sevens. That’s a lot of vanilla. One wonders if it’s a typo.”  
  
“One wonders.” Blue repeated.  
  
“ _Blue!”_ Maura shouted up. “Are you gone yet?”  
  
Blue didn’t reply because Persephone disliked high pitched sounds, and yelling at his mother seemed like it would qualify as one. Instead, he said, “I found something. If I show it to you, will you not tell anyone?”  
  
This was a silly question, as Persephone never told anyone anything even when it wasn’t a secret.  
  
Blue handed over the journal. Persephone asked, “Should I open it?”  
  
Blue flapped a hand, meaning _yes, and quickly._ He fidgeted on the bed while Persephone flicked through the pages, face betraying nothing.   
  
Finally, Blue asked, “Well?”  
  
“It’s very nice.” Persephone said politely.   
  
“It’s not mine.”  
  
“I can see that.”  
  
“It was left at Ni- wait, why do you say that?”  
  
Persephone paged back and forth. Her dainty voice was soft enough that Blue strained to hear it. “It’s clearly a girls journal. And, its taking her forever to find it. You’d have found it by now.”  
  
“ _BLUE!”_ roared Maura. “ _I’M NOT SHOUTING AGAIN!”_  
  
“What should I do about it?”  
  
Persephone ran her fingers across the varying papers, just as Blue had. Persephone was right, Blue realised. If the journal had been his, he would’ve just copied down the necessary information, rather than all the cutting and pasting. The clippings were intriguing but unnecessary. Whoever made the journal adored the hunt itself, the aesthetic properties couldn’t be accidental. It was, by all accounts, an academic piece of art.  
  
“Well,” Persephone said. “First, you should find out who it belongs to.”   
  
Blue’s shoulders sagged. It was an answer he’d have gotten from Maura or Calla. It was an answer he’d come to Persephone to _avoid_ getting.  
  


Persephone added, “Then I think you’d better find out if its true.”


	10. you be the bird i'll be the magician

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alison? not there  
> gansey? worried  
> chainsaw? in a bag  
> aidan? a little shit  
> hotel? trivago

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from The Magician by Dizzy (it's on my raven boys playlist on spotify- it really reminds me of Adam/Alison)

Alison wasn’t waiting by the postbox graveyard in the morning.  
  
The first time that Gansey had come to pick up Alison, she’d actually driven past the entrance to Alison’s neighbourhood. Well, she’d used it as a place to turn around and go back the way she’d come. The road was two ruts through a field. _Driveway_ was too lofty a word for it, and it was partially impossible to believe that it lead to one house, let alone a collection of them. When Gansey had found Alison’s house, her father had come charging out with a baseball bat at the sight of the Aglionby jumper. For weeks after the incident, Aidan had taken to calling Gansey the “S.R.F”, where the S stood for _soft,_ the R stood for _rich_ and the F stood for something else.  
  
Now Alison would (usually) meet Gansey where the tarmac ended.  
  
But there was no-one waiting by the postboxes today. It was just a lot of empty space.   
  
Gansey peered down the deserted drive, then checked her watch. She had eighteen minutes to make the fifteen minute drive to school.  
  
She waited.   
  
And she waited.  
  
She called Alison’s home phone, which just rung out.  
  
She called Monmouth, where Charlotte answered, sounding like she’d just be woken.  
  
“Charlotte,” Gansey said loudly, to be heard over the engine. Charlotte had accidentally let Gansey leave her journal at Nino’s, and the lack of its presence was unsettling. “Do you remember Alison saying she had work after school today?”   
  
On the days where Alison had work, she often rode her bike in so she could get to places easier  
  
Charlotte made a noise that was vaguely negative.  
  
There was sixteen minutes until class.  
  
“Call me if she calls.” Gansey said.  
  
“I won’t be here.” Charlotte replied. “I’m almost gone anyway.”  
  
She unsuccessfully tried the home phone again after hanging up on Charlotte. Alison’s mother could be there and not answering, but she really didn’t have time to go and investigate.   
  
She could cut class.  
  
Gansey tossed her phone onto the passenger seat. “Come on, Alison.”  
  
Of all the places Gansey had attended boarding school – and she’d attended a lot in her four years of underage searching – Aglionby Academy was her mother’s favourite, which meant it was most likely to land the students in the Ivy League.   
  
Or maybe the Senate. It also meant it was the most difficult school that Gansey had been to. Before Henrietta, the search for Glendower had been her primary activity, but now there were no failing grades. At Aglionby, if you dropped below a B average, you were thrown out on your ass. Her father had made it very known that if she couldn’t make it at private school she was cut out of the will.   
  
Gansey couldn’t cut class, not after missing school the day before. That’s what it came down to, with fourteen minutes until class, a fifteen minute drive and no Alison waiting.   
  
She felt old panic slowly creeping into her lungs.  
  
 _Don’t panic,_ she told herself. _You were wrong about Aidan last night. You have to stop this, you idiot. Death isn’t close._  
  
She tried the home phone once more, not expecting anything. Nothing, again. She had to go. Alison must’ve taken her bike, she must have errands, she must have work and she probably had just forgotten to tell Gansey about it.  
  
 _Come on, Alison.  
  
_ Wiping her sweaty palms on her skirt, she put her hands back on the steering wheel and headed for school.  
  
___  
  
Gansey didn’t get a chance to see if Alison made it to school until third period, when they both had Latin. This was, rather oddly, the only class Aidan never missed. She was head of the class in Latin. She studied both joylessly and relentlessly, almost like her life depended on it. Right behind her Alison, star pupil extraordinaire, otherwise top of every class that she took. She also studied relentlessly, but her future _did_ depend on it.   
  
For her part, Gansey preferred French. She had told her brother, Richard, that there was very little need to learn a language that couldn’t be used to translate a menu. In actuality, French was just easier to learn. Her mother spoke a little, and he’d been to France. She’d originally taken Latin to translate historical texts, but Aidan’s proficiency rendered it useless.   
  
Gansey strode across the centre green to Borden House. Aidan appeared, knocking Gansey’s side with her elbow. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days, a fact that wasn’t helped by her more-smudged-than-usual eyeliner.   
  
Aidan hissed. “Where’s Parrish?”  
  
“She didn’t come in with me today.” Gansey said, dread settling in her gut. Aidan and Alison shared a second period. “You haven’t seen her?”  
  
“Wasn’t in class.”  
  
Behind Gansey, someone punched her shoulder lightly and said _Gansey girl!_ As they walked past. Gansey, rather half-heartedly, lifted three fingers; the signal of the rowing team.   
  
“I tried contacting her at the house.”  
  
Aidan replied meanly. “Well, Poor Girl needs a cell phone.”  
  
A few months ago, Gansey had offered to buy Alison a cell phone and had promptly been launched into the longest fight they’d ever had, including a week of the silent treatment that was only broken when Aidan did something more hideously offensive then either of them could manage if they tried.  
  
“Lynch!”  
  
Gansey looked in the direction of the voice; Aidan didn’t. The owner of said voice was hard to identify in the same Aglionby uniform as everyone else.  
  
“Lynch!” The call came again. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”  
  
Aidan still didn’t look up. She absently shifted her bag on her shoulder and continued to stalk – that’s the only word for it – across the green.  
  
“What’s all this?” Gansey demanded.  
  
“Some people don’t take losing very well.” Aidan replied.  
  
“Was that Kavinsky? Don’t tell me you’re racing again.”  
  
“Don’t ask me then.”  
  
Gansey contemplated giving Aidan a curfew, or if she should quit rowing to spend time with her on Fridays – she _knew_ that’s when Aidan got into trouble. Maybe she could convince Aidan to...  
  
Aidan adjusted her bag again, and this time Gansey took a closer look at the action. The bag was larger than usual, and she handled it delicately.  
  
“Why are you carrying that bag?” Gansey asked. “Christ, you’ve got that bird in there, haven’t you?”  
  
“She has to be fed every two hours.”  
  
“How do you know?”  
  
“Little something called the internet, Gansey, Jesus.” Aidan pulled open the door to the Borden house.  
  
“If you get caught with that thing-” Gansey couldn’t even think of a suitable threat. Was there even a punishment for sneaking a live bird into class? She finished instead, “If it dies in class, I forbid you from throwing it out in school.”  
  
“ _She.”_ Aidan corrected. “It’s a she.”  
  
“I’d buy that if it had defining sexual characteristics. She better not have bird flu or something.”  
  
She wasn’t actually thinking about Aidan’s raven, she was thinking of Alison not being in class.   
  
Aidan and Gansey took their usual seats in the back. At the front, Whelk was writing verbs on the blackboard.  
  
When they had come in, Whelk had stopped writing mid-word, though there was no reason to believe that Whelk had any interest in their conversation. Gansey had a strange suspicion that the paused piece of chalk in Whelk’s hand had something to with them, that the Latin teacher had stopped writing just to listen in. Maybe Alison’s paranoia was beginning to rub off on her.  
  
Aidan caught Whelk’s eye and held it in an unfriendly way. Despite her interest in the subject, Aidan had declared Whelk a socially awkward shitbag earlier in the year, and then further clarified that she didn’t like her. Aidan, because she despised everyone, wasn’t a good character judge but in this case, Gansey would have to agree.  
  
Gansey had once tried to hold an academic conversation with her, knowing full well the effect it had on other teachers, but Whelk was too old to be a peer and too young to be a mentor, and Gansey couldn’t find an angle to work with.  
  
Aidan didn’t drop her antagonistic stare. She was very good at staring at people. There was something about her stare that took something from the recipient.   
  
The Latin teacher awkwardly flicked her gaze back to the blackboard. Having dealt with Whelk’s curiosity, Aidan asked. “What’re you going to do about Parrish?”  
  
“I guess I’m going there after class.”  
  
“She’s probably sick.”  
  
They looked at each other. _We’re already making excuses for her,_ Gansey thought.  
  
Aidan peered inside her bag again. In the darkness, Gansey could just see the glint of the raven’s beak. Usually, Gansey would’ve once more basked in the odds of Aidan finding a raven, but the quest didn’t feel very magical with Alison missing.  
  
“Miss Gansey and Miss Lynch?”  
  
Whelk had managed to suddenly manifest next to their desk. Both girls looked up at her. Gansey polite, Aidan hostile.   
  
“You seem to have a very large bag today, Miss Lynch.” Whelk said.  
  
“You know what they say about women with large bags.” Ronan replied. “ _te, ostende mihi faciem tuam, ego tibi hic sellas ostendam meus?”  
  
_ Gansey had no idea what Aidan had said, but from her smirk, she guessed it wasn’t entirely polite.  
  
Whelk’s expression of distaste confirmed Gansey’s suspicion, but she merely rapped her knuckles on the desk and moved on.  
  
“Being a little shit in Latin isn’t the way to an A,” Gansey said.  
  
Aidan’s smile was a golden horror. “It was last year.”  
  
At the front of the classroom, Whelk began to teach. Alison never showed _  
_


	11. got a secret can you keep it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> guess who :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Secret by The Pierces

“Mom, why’s Neeve here?” Blue asked.  
  
Like his mother, he was standing on the kitchen table. The moment he’d come back from school, Maura had enlisted his help in helping change bulbs in the terribly designed light fitting. It was the kind of task that everyone liked to avoid until all the bulbs had gone out, because it was a very annoying thing to do. Blue didn’t know why his mother had asked him, it’s not like he was tall enough to even reach the fixture, but he was thankful to help nonetheless, just to keep the looming threat of Gansey’s appointment at bay.  
  
“She’s family.” Maura said grimly, tugging at a stubborn bulb.  
  
“Family that comes home in the middle of the night?”  
  
Maura shot a look at Blue that threatened violence. “You were born with bigger ears than I remember. Neeve’s just helping me find something while she’s staying here.”  
  
The front door opened, which didn’t bother either of them. Both Calla and Persephone were about somewhere. Calla was less likely the culprit because she was nothing if not a creature of habit, but Persephone tended to just blow about.  
  
Blue asked, “What kind of something?”  
  
“Blue.”  
  
“What kind of something?”  
  
“A some _one._ ” Maura said with a long exhale.  
  
“What kind of _someone?”_  
  
Before his mother could answer, they heard an unfamiliar voice:  
  
“Well that’s a strange way to run a business.  
  
They both turned slowly, Blue’s thick-soled shoes squeaking on the table. He lowered the box of light bulbs, his arms feeling slightly rubbery. The owner of the voice stood in the doorway, both hands in her pockets. She was in his mid-twenties at most, with a shock of black hair. She was beautiful in a way that required some work to figure out; all her features seemed a little large for her face.  
  
Maura glanced at Blue, with a singular eyebrow raised. Blue shrugged once in response. She wasn’t holding any kind of weapon so she was _probably_ not here to murder them or steal any electronics.  
  
“And that,” Maura said, releasing the light fixture and jumping off the table, “is a strange way to enter someone’s home.”  
  
“I’m sorry.” The young woman said, “There is a sign out front saying this place is a business.”  
  
There was, in fact, a sign outside. It was hand painted – but by whose hand, Blue didn’t know – with the word PYSYCHIC, and then, underneath that:  
  
“By appointment only.” Maura said, grimacing at the kitchen. Blue had left a basket of clean laundry on the table. It had one of his mother’s bras on top. Blue didn’t feel very sorry about this, as it wasn’t like he’d expected random women to come strolling in. Or, at least, he hadn’t expected random women that didn’t live here to come strolling in.  
  
“Well then,” the women said, “I’d like to make an appointment.”  
  
A voice from behind the women made all three of them turn.   
  
“We could do a triple reading for you.” Persephone said. She stood at the base of the stairs, small and made mostly up of hair. The women stared. Blue was having a hard time figuring out if this was because she was considering the offer, or because Persephone was rather a lot to take in at first glance.  
  
“What,” the woman said, “is that?”  
  
It took Blue a moment to realise that she meant “triple reading” and not Persephone. He climbed down off the table, still holding his box of light bulbs.   
  
“It means,” Maura said, “that the three of us – Persephone, Calla and I – all read your cards and then compare the interpretations. She doesn’t offer to just anyone.”  
  
“Is it more expensive?”  
  
“Not if you change that one stubborn bulb.” Maura said, dusting her hands off on her jeans.  
  
“Fine.” Said the women, sounding rather vexed about it.  
  
Maura gestured for Blue to give a light bulb to the woman. Then she said to Persephone. “Would you get Calla?”  
  
“Oh dear.” Persephone said in a small voice. As her voice was already incredibly small, so her small voice was indeed tiny. She turned and went up the stairs, bare feet quite soundless as she did so.  
  
Maura eyed Blue, asking a question. Again, Blue shrugged.  
  
“My son, Blue, will be in the reading room with us, if you don’t mind. He makes things louder.”  
  
The woman threw an uninterested glance at Blue, then clambered onto the table, grunting while she twisted at the stubborn bulb.  
  
“Now you see the problem.” Maura said. “What’s your name.”  
  
“Ah, could we keep this anonymous?”  
  
“We’re psychics, not strippers.”  
  
Blue laughed, but the woman didn’t. Blue thought this was unfair of her. It may have been slightly distasteful, but it was funny.  
  
The kitchen lightened as the new bulb was screwed into place. The woman stepped onto a chair and then onto the floor.   
  
“We’ll be discreet.” Maura promised, then gestured for the woman to follow her.  
  
The woman looked around the reading room with clinical interest, her gaze passing over candles, the elaborate chandelier, the house plants, the incense burners, the large rustic table, and then finally settled on a framed photograph of Steve Martin.  
  
“Signed.” Maura said smugly, noticing her interest. Then: “Ah, Calla.”  
  
Calla stormed into the room, her eyebrows at their usual angry peak, more so because she had been disturbed. She was wearing lipstick in a dangerous shade of plum, which made her mouth a scrunched up diamond beneath her sharp nose. She gave the woman the kind of look she was famous for giving: the kind that looks deep into your soul and doesn’t like what it sees. She plucked her deck of cards off a shelf and flopped down in one of the mismatched chairs. Persephone still stood in the doorway, clasping and unclasping her hands. Blue very hastily slid into a chair at the end of the table. The room seemed smaller than it had before, but this was mostly Calla’s fault.   
  
Persephone said kindly, “have a seat.” And Calla said, unkindly, “what do you want to know?”  
  
The woman dropped into a seat. Maura took her seat in-between Persephone and Calla and opposite the woman. Blue was, as he always was, a little apart.  
  
“I would prefer not to say,” the woman said, “perhaps you’ll tell me.”  
  
Calla gave her a fiendish smile. “Perhaps.”  
  
Maura slid her deck of cards across the table and told the women to shuffle them. She did so quite well but she did it the same way anyone would while watched. Persephone and Calla both did the same.  
  
“You’ve been to a reading before.” Maura observed.  
  
The woman made a vague noise of confirmation. She obviously thought that any information would let them fake the reading. Blue didn’t think she was a sceptic, only that she was sceptical of them.  
  
Maura slid her deck back from the woman. Blue couldn’t remember her ever having a different one. The edges were fuzzy from. They were only a standard tarot deck, about as impressive as she made them. She selected ten cards and laid them out, face down. Calla did the same with her crisper deck. She’d replaced hers a few years ago after an unfortunate incident that had caused her to dislike the one she had. The room was quiet enough to hear the slide of every card.  
  
Persephone held her cards in her long, long hands, eyeing the woman for a long moment. Finally, she contributed a mere two cards. Blue loved watching Persephone lay her cards, the flick of her wrist making the movement seem more like ballet, or sleight of hand. Even Persephone’s cards were ethereal. They were a little larger than both Calla and Maura’s deck, and the designs were smudgy renditions of the art, all spidery lines and obscured backgrounds. It was hard to ask Persephone a question you didn’t _need_ the answer to, so Blue had never found out where she had gotten the deck.  
  
Now all the cards were laid out, Maura, Calla and Persephone bent their heads over them to study the shape. This close to the woman, Blue could smell the rather overwhelming scent of manly shower gel, one of those ones that didn’t tell you what the scent was and was only called something along the line SHOCK or SWEAT AND BLOOD or BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA. A very large part of Blue admired the woman for this.  
  
Calla was the first to speak. She had flipped over the three of swords. On her card, there were three swords stabbed into a bleeding heart the same colour as her lips. “You’ve lost someone close to you.”  
  
The woman looked at her hands. “I have lost...” She considered her next words. “Many things.”  
  
Maura pressed her lips together. One of Calla’s eyebrows edged toward her hair. They darted glances at each other. Blue was fluent enough to understand that Maura’s look had meant, _what do you think?_ And that Calla’s look had replied, _this is off._ Persephone’s look had meant nothing.   
  
Maura brushed the edge of the five of pentacles. “Money’s a concern.” On her card, a man with a limp hobbled past an old woman with a shawl around her shoulders. She added, “Because of a woman.”  
  
The woman, to her credit, did not stop staring at Maura, “My parents had a lot of money. Now they’re divorced and there isn’t any money for me.”  
  
It was a strange and factual way of putting it.  
  
Maura gestured to another card. “Now you’ve got a job that you’re tired of. You’re good at it, but you wish you could do something else.”  
  
The woman’s lips were thin with the truth of it all.   
  
Persephone touched the first card she had drawn, which was the knight of pentacles. A cold-eyes, armoured man surveyed a field from horseback, with a coin in his hand. If Blue squinted, he could see the curved triangle symbol that Neeve had dawn in the churchyard, that Maura had drawn mindlessly on the shower door, that had been drawn all throughout the journal.   
  
But then he let his yes relaxed, and it was just a faintly drawn pentacle, after which the card was named.  
  
Persephone spoke in her small, precise voice. “You’re looking for something.”  
  
The woman’s head snapped toward her.  
  
Calla’s card was also the knight of pentacles. It was unusual for two decks to agree. What was even more unusual, however, was that Maura’s card was also a knight of pentacles. Three cold-eyes and armour-clad knights surveyed the land.  
  
Three. Again.  
  
Calla said bitterly, “You’re willing to do whatever it takes. You’ve been looking for years.”  
  
“ _Yes.”_ The woman said, surprising them all with the ferocity of her response. “But how much longer? When will I find it?”  
  
The psychics all turned back to the cards, looking for an answer. Blue looked too. He may not possess the sight, but he’d grown up around enough people that did to understand what the cards meant. His eyes moved from the tower, which meant that his life was about to change drastically, to the last card in the reading, the page of cups. Blue frowned at his mother. The page of cups wasn’t a negative card. It happened to be the card Maura always thought represented Blue when she did a personal reading.  
  
 _You’re the page of cups_ , Maura had told him once, _look at all the potential she holds in that cup. You even have the same face._  
  
There wasn’t just one page of cups on the table.  
  
Just like the knight of pentacles, it was tripled. Three young women, with Blue’s face, holding cups of potential. Maura’s expression was dark.  
  
Blue’s skin tingled. He felt as though there was no end to the fates he was tied to. Gansey, Adam, the unseeable place Neeve had scryed to, this strange woman. His pulse was racing.  
  
Maura stood up so suddenly that her chair toppled over.   
  
“The reading’s finished.” She snapped.  
  
Persephone’s bewildered gaze up to Maura’s face. Calla looked confused but delighted at the appearance of conflict. Blue didn’t recognise his mother’s face.   
  
“Excuse me?” The woman asked “But the other cards-”  
  
“You heard her.” Calla said, her voice pure acid. Blue didn’t know whether she was also uneasy or if she was just backing Maura up. “The readings over.”  
  
“Leave my house.” Mayra said. Then, with forced politeness, she added, “Thank you. Goodybe.”  
  
Calla moved so that Maura could whirl to the front door and point over the threshold.  
  
Rising to her feet, the woman said, “I’m incredibly insulted.”  
  
Maura didn’t deign that with a reply. As soon as the woman had cleared the doorway, Maura slammed the door shut so forcefully that the dishes in the kitchen cabinets clattered around.   
  
Calla leaned her forehead to the window, watching the woman leave. The curtains made it look like she had lacy hair.  
  
Maura paced back and forth. Blue thought of asking a question, then stopped, then started and then stopped. It seemed wrong to ask questions if no one else was going to.  
  
Persephone said,” What a rather unpleasant young woman.”  
  
Calla unstuck her forehead from the window and let the curtains drift closed. “I got her licence plate.”  
  
“I hope she _never_ finds whatever she’s looking for.” Maura said.  
  
Persephone retrieved her two tarot cards from the table and said, a little regretfully. “She’s trying quite hard. I think that she’ll at least find _something_.”  
  
Maura whirled towards Blue. “If you ever see that woman again, walk the other way.”  
  
“No,” Calla corrected, “Kick her in the shins and _then_ run away.”


	12. i remember when your head caught flame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they readin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is SO LONG
> 
> title from Buzzcut Season by Lorde

Gansey, of course, was late for her appointment. The appointment time came and went with no flashy cars or annoying giggles. Raven Girls never turned up on time for _anything,_ so Blue shouldn’t be surprised. Even more disappointingly, Alison hadn’t called.  
  
“Maybe she wrote down the wrong time.” Maura suggested, to make Blue feel better.   
  
Blue didn’t think she wrote down the wrong time.  
  
Another ten minutes dragged by. “Maybe she had car trouble.”  
  
Blue didn’t think that she had car trouble.  
  
Calla retrieved the crime novel she’d been reading and went back upstairs. She called down to them, “that reminds me, you need to get the car fixed. I see a breakdown in your future. There’ll be a very ugly man who will be _way_ to helpful.”  
  
It was entirely possible that Calla _did_ see a breakdown, but it was also possible she was exaggerating. Maura put it on the calendar anyway.  
  
“Maybe I accidentally told her tomorrow instead of today.” Maura said, though she doesn’t sound convinced.  
  
Persephone murmured, “That is entirely possible.” And then she said, “I think I’ll make a pie.” Blue looked anxiously at Persephone. Pie making was a long and loving process that Persephone hated to be interrupted during. She wouldn’t make a pie if she really thought Gansey would arrive.  
  
Maura looked at Persephone, and then retrieved a bag on yellow squash and a stick of butter from the fridge. Now Blue knew exactly how the rest of the day would go, and it didn’t involve Gansey. Persephone would make something sweet, Maura would make something with butter and Calla, whenever she came downstairs, would make something with bacon or sausage or some other breakfast meat.  
  
Blue didn’t think that Maura accidentally told Gansey that the appointment was tomorrow instead of today. He did, however, think that Gansey probably looked at the clock on her Mercedes-Benz dashboard or her Aston Martin’s radio and decided that the reading interrupted her netball or debate club. He couldn’t pretend to be surprised, she’d done exactly what he had thought a raven girl would do.  
  
Just as Blue was getting ready to mope upstairs with his embroidery stuff and his homework, Orla yelled from the Phone Room. Her wordless wail eventually solidified into words.”  
  
“There is a 1973 Camaro outside and it _matches my nails!”_  
  
The last time Blue had paid attention to Orla’s nails, they had been a rather complicated paisley pattern. He felt mildly impressed that a car had managed that.   
  
“Well, here we go.” Maura said, dropping her squash in the sink. Calla re-appeared and exchanged a look with Persephone.  
  
Blue’s stomach dropped into the soles of his feet.  
  
 _Gansey. That’s all there is._  
  
The doorbell rang.  
  
“Are you ready?” Calla asked Blue.  
  
Gansey was the girl he’d either kill or fall in love with. Or both. There wasn’t any being ready, there was just Maura opening the door.  
  
There were three girls in the doorway, backlit by the setting sun. There were three sets of shoulders: one confident, one tense, one wiry.  
  
“I’m terribly sorry that I’m late.” Said the girl in the front, with the confident shoulders. The smell of mint rolled in with her words. “Will it be an issue?”  
  
Blue knew that voice and she scowled automatically.   
  
He reached to grasp the staircase railing to keep his balance as President Mobile Phone stepped into the hallway.  
  
 _Oh no. Not her._ All this time she’d been worrying about how Gansey was going to die, and as it turned out, he was going to throttle her. At Nino’s the blare of music had drowned out her voice and the smell of grease had usurped the smell of mint.  
  
But now, with all the facts together, it seemed rather obvious.   
  
She looked slightly less presidential in the hallway of his home, but that could’ve been because she’d rolled up the sleeves of her button down and removed her jumper, probably because of the heat. Her usually elegant hair was slightly mussed and down around her shoulders. She still had that 1940s dame glow. It was the kind of glow that meant that she came from _a lot_ of money. It was hard to tell if she was really pretty or just really rich. The two things could be the same.  
  
This was Gansey.   
  
And that meant the journal belonged to her.  
  
This meant that _Alison_ belonged to her. No, women weren’t objects, but Gansey seemed to collect them like they were.  
  
“No,” Maura said, her curiosity overriding any scheduling. “It’s not to late. Come into the reading room. Can we have some names?”  
  
Because of course she had brought most of her clique from Nino’s, everyone but the smudge girl. They filled up the hallway, so comfortable with each other that it allowed no one else to be comfortable in their presence. They were a pack of sleek animals, with their expensive uniforms and sleek watches. Even the sharp girl’s tattoo, running up the knobs of her spine and digging its hooks into her neck felt like a weapon to Blue.  
  
“Gansey.” President Mobile Phone said, pointing to herself. “Alison, Aidan. Where do you want us? In there?”  
  
She pointed a hand toward the reading room.  
  
“In there.” Maura said agreeably. “This is my son, by the way. He’ll be present for the reading, if you don’t mind.”  
  
Gansey’s eyes found Blue. Her smile froze. He scowled once again.  
  
“Hi, again.” She said.”This is awkward.”  
  
Maura shot Blue an acidic look. “You’ve met.”  
  
Blue put a hand to his chest, feeling unfairly persecuted. Before he could defend himself, Gansey said:  
  
“Yes,” she said with a tremendous amount of dignity. “We had a discussion regarding the proper way to talk to waiters. I didn’t realise he was your son. _Alison?”_  
  
She shot a nearly as acidic look at Alison. If Blue had known _she_ was coming, he might not have worn the top light pink top that he’d modified to be cropped and slit up the sides. She was staring at the strip of skin between his top and his shorts. “I didn’t know. Swear on my life.”  
  
“What happened to your face?” Blue asked.  
  
Alison shrugged. Either she or Aidan smelled like a parking garage. Her voice was humourless, “Do you think it makes me look tough?”  
  
It made her look more fragile, unearthed from soil and slightly like a corpse, but Blue thought it would be rude to say that.  
  
Aidan said, “It makes you look like a dumbass.”  
  
“Aidan,” Gansey said.  
  
“ _Everybody needs to sit down!”_ Maura yelled.   
  
It was an alarming thing to hear Maura yell, so everybody threw themselves into the mismatched furniture. Alison rubbed a hand over her cheekbone like she could erase the bruise. Gansey sat at the head of the table, her hands folded neatly in front of her. It made her look very important. She had one eyebrow raised at the framed photograph of Steve Martin.  
  
Only Calla and Aidan didn’t sit down, and they regarded each other both hostilely and warily.   
  
It felt like there had never been this many people in the house, but that was obviously untrue. Blue felt like their very presence took something from him.  
  
“It is,” Maura said, pressing one finger to her jugular, “too damn loud in here.”  
  
Something about her face told Blue it wasn’t their external voices that were too loud. Persephone was also wincing.  
  
“Do I need to leave?” Blue asked, although he didn’t want to actually do that.  
  
Gansey, not understanding, immediately said, “Why would you need to leave?”  
  
“He makes things louder for us.” Maura said, frowning at all of them as if she was trying to figure out a puzzle. “And you three are... _extremely_ loud already.”  
  
Blue felt hot. He imagined being an electric outlet, with too many plugs attached, about to explode any minute. What was it with these raven girls? How could they deafen his mother? Was it all of them together, or merely one of them?  
  
“What do you mean, very loud?” Gansey asked. She was quite clearly the ringleader of her friends, Blue thought. The other kept looking at her for cues.   
  
“I mean that there’s something very...” Maura trailed off and gestured with her hands, unable to describe it. She turned to Persephone and asked, with her eyes, _what’s going on?_ “How are we going to do this.”  
  
His mother was _undone_ and it made Blue curl his hands to distract from the nerves in his stomach.   
  
“One at a time?” Persephone said, voice nearly inaudible.   
  
Calla said, “One-offs. We’ll have to, or some of them will have to leave. They’re too noisy together.”  
  
Alison and Gansey exchanged a glance while Aidan picked disinterestedly at the leather bands around her wrists.  
  
Calla talked as though Gansey hadn’t spoke at all. “It doesn’t matter what they want. They’ll deafen you for a week.”  
  
Maura’s finger was still pressed to her neck. She told Gansey, “A one-off is where you each draw one card, and we interpret.”  
  
Gansey and Alison shared some kind of private conversation with their eyes. Blue, as an outside observer, found it very frustrating to watch. It also made him strangely jealous. He’d never had a friendship so strong that it could transcend words.  
  
Alison nodded in response to whatever Gansey had asked, then Gansey said, “Whatever you’re comfortable with.”  
  
“Wait,” Persephone said as Maura produced her deck, “have Blue deal it.”  
  
It wasn’t the first, nor would it be the last, time that Blue had been asked to shuffle the cards. If the reading was important of difficult (or both, in this case) they had Blue touch the deck to hone the message that cards sent. This time, he was incredibly aware of everyone’s attention as he took the cards from his mother. Just for the girls benefit, he shuffled in a slightly theatrical fashion. He was very good at little card tricks, because it didn’t involve any psychic talent. As the girls, looking rather impressed, watched the cards fly from hand to hand, Blue mused that he’d make an excellent fake psychic.   
  
No one offered immediately to go first, so he offered the deck to Alison. She met his eyes for a moment. There was something very intentional about the action.   
  
Alison selected a card and presented it to Maura.  
  
“Two of swords.” She said. Blue was overly aware of how _Henrietta_ his mother sounded. Was that how Blue sounded?   
  
Maura continued, “You’re avoiding a hard choice. Acting by not acting. You’re ambitious but feel like something’s- no, someone –is asking for something you aren’t willing to give. Someone close to you is asking you to compromise your principals. Your father?”  
  
“No, the sister.” Calla snapped.  
  
“I don’t have a sister ma’am.” Alison said politely, but Blue watched her eyes flick to Gansey.   
  
Maura conferred with Calla and Persephone for a moment, then said. “There isn’t a right option, just one you can live with. There might be a third option but right now you’re too involved with the other two to see it. From what I’m seeing, the third option would involve you going and making your own path. I’m also sensing that you’re an analytical thinker and you’ve spent a lot of time ignoring your emotions. Now isn’t the time for that.”  
  
“Thanks.” Alison said. It didn’t seem like the right thing to say in this situation, but it wasn’t wrong either. Blue liked her politeness; it was different to Gansey’s. When Gansey was polite she was powerful, when Alison was polite she gave power away.  
  
It seemed right to leave Gansey for last, so Blue moved over to Aidan, though he was a little scared of her. Something about her dripped venom like it was honey, even when she hadn’t said anything. The worst thing was, in Blue’s opinion, was that her antagonism made him want to gain he favour. To have the approval of someone like her, who didn’t care for anyone or anything, would be worth more.  
  
Blue stood up and headed over to Aidan, who was still standing up. It looked like she and Calla were about to brawl.   
  
Blue fanned the cards out and had to physically look up, because Aidan was insanely tall. This didn’t seem fair to Blue.  
  
Aidan said, “I’m not taking one. Tell me something true first.”  
  
Calla stiffened and answered for Maura. “I beg your pardon?”  
  
Aidan’s voice was brittle and cold and harsh. “Everything you just said could apply to anyone. Every living person has doubts; everyone has disagreements with their father or their sister. Don’t just throw a card at me and spoon feed me some bullshit. Tell me something specific.  
  
Blue narrowed his eyes and Aidan narrowed her eyes back.   
  
Maura started to say, “We don’t do spec-”  
  
Calla interrupted. “A secret killed your father and you know what it is.”  
  
The room froze. Persephone and Maura were staring at Calla, Gansey and Alison were staring at Aidan. Blue and Aidan were staring at Calla’s hand.  
  
People rarely asked Calla to use her strangest talent: psychometry. Calla had the odd yet uncanny ability to touch an object and sense its owner’s thoughts, its origin and the places the thing had been.  
  
Calla snaked her hand away. She had reached up to touch where Aidan’s tattoo met her collar. Aidan’s face was turned slightly to look at where Calla’s fingers had been.  
  
There might as well have only been those two in the room. Aidan was a head taller than Calla already, but she looked like a lanky wildcat next to her. Calla was a lioness.  
  
Calla hissed. “What are you?”  
  
Aidan’s smile was as sharp as a knife, but empty. It chilled Blue down to the core.  
  
“Aidan?” Gansey asked, concerned.  
  
“I’m waiting in the car.” Without further comment, she left, slamming the door behind her.  
  
Gansey look accusatorily at Calla. “Her father’s dead.”  
  
“I know.” Calla said, her eyes narrowed to slits.  
  
Gansey’s voice had passed straight through polite and had come out rude. “I don’t know how you found out about that, but it’s a terrible thing to throw at a kid.”  
  
“At a snake, you mean.” Calla snarled. “And what did you come for, if you didn’t think we could do what we’re your paying us for? She asked for a specific, so I gave her one. Sorry it wasn’t kittens.”  
  
Maura said, “Calla.” At the same time Alison said, “Gansey.”  
  
Alison leaned in to whisper something into Gansey’s ear. A muscle ticked in Gansey’s jaw line, but she shifted back into President Mobile Phone. Blue wasn’t anything else, and now he was annoyed that he hadn’t been paying attention to what was different.  
  
Gansey said, “I’m sorry. Aidan is blunt and she wasn’t comfortable coming here in the first place. I wasn’t trying to accuse you of being fake. Can we continue?”  
  
She sounded so _old,_ Blue thought. She was so formal, compared to the others. If there was something that made him want to impress Aidan, there was something that made him want to guard his emotions against her. He couldn’t like her, or whatever it was that made these girls so loud would drown him.  
  
“You’re fine.” Maura said, but she was glaring at Calla when she said it.   
  
Blue moved to where Gansey was sitting and caught a flash of bright orange from the curb outside. It did seem like a colour Orla would paint her nails. It was clearly an Aglionby girl car, but it wasn’t as new or shiny as one would expect.   
  
He stopped in front of Gansey. This close, he again caught the scent of mint that made his heart trip.  
  
Gansey looked down at the fanned deck of cards. Blue looked at her like that, he bend of her shoulders and the back of her hair and he abruptly remembered the spirit he’d been afraid to fall in love with. He now knew that he could never fall in love with her.  
  
 _What happens to you, Gansey? When do you become the person I saw in the graveyard?  
  
_ Gansey looked up at him, a crease between her eyebrows. “I don’t know how to choose. Would it work if you picked it for me?”  
  
Persephone answered from behind Blue. “It will if you want it to. It’s about intention.”  
  
“I want you to.” She said. “Please.”  
  
Blue fanned the cards across the table and then let his fingers drift lazily over them. They all felt the same. One had slid further than the other, so he chose that one.  
  
When he flipped it over, he let out a small, singular laugh.  
  
The page of cups looked back at Blue with his own face. It felt as if someone was laughing at him, but he had no one to blame but himself.   
  
When Maura saw it, her voice was remote. “Not that one. Choose another.”  
  
“Maura.” Persephone said, but Mur dismissed he with a wave of her hand.  
  
“Another one.”  
  
“What’s wrong with that one?” Gansey asked.  
  
“It has Blue’s energy on it. It’s not meant to be yours. Choose another.”  
  
Blue replaced the card and shuffled them with considerably less drama than before.   
  
When he offered the cards again, Gansey closed her eyes. She let her fingers graze the edges of the card before selecting. She picked one and flipped it over to show the room.  
  
It was the page of cups.  
  
She looked at the card, and then at Blue’s face, noting the similarity.   
  
“Another one.” Maura said, snagging the card from in-between Gansey’s fingers.  
  
“ _Now_ why?” Gansey asked. “What’s wrong with it?”  
  
“There’ nothing wrong with it. It’s just not yours.” Maura replied.  
  
For the first time, aggravation showed in Gansey’s expression. It made Blue like her a little more.  
  
Gansey flippantly snagged another card, clearly annoyed. With a little flourish, she slapped the card on the table.  
  
Blue swallowed audibly.  
  
Maura said. “ _That’s_ your card.”  
  
On the card, a black knight sat astride a white horse. The visor of its helmet was pushed up so it was clear that there was no head, just a skull with sockets for eye holes. Under the horses hooves lay a corpse.  
  
“Death.” Gansey read aloud. She didn’t sound very alarmed.   
  
“Great job, Maura.” Calla chided. “You going to interpret that card for the kid?”  
  
“I thought psychics didn’t predict death.” Alison said. “I thought Death was only symbolic.”  
  
The three psychics made vague noises. Blue, aware of Gansey’s doomed fate, felt sick. Aglionby girl or not, she had friends that cared about her, she was young, and a life that involved a hideously orange car. It was terrible to know that she’d be dead in twelve months.  
  
“Actually, I don’t really care about that.” Gansey said.  
  
Every pair of eyes in the room flashed to her.  
  
“I mean the cards are very interesting, but I didn’t come here to get my future read. I’m more interested in finding that out myself.”  
  
Her eyes flashed to Calla after this, probably realizing that there was a fine line between “polite” and “Aidan”.   
  
“I really came here to ask about energy.” Gansey continued. “I know you work with energy, and I’ve been trying to find a ley line near Henrietta. Do you know anything about that?”  
  
 _The journal!  
  
_ “Ley line?” Maura repeated. “I don’t know anything by that name. What is it?”  
  
Blue was slightly stunned. He’d always thought his mother to be truthful.   
  
“They’re straight energy lines that go across the globe. They connect major spiritual places. Alison thought you might know about them because you deal with energy.” Gansey explained.  
  
Blue thought it was fairly obvious that she meant the corpse road, but Maura just turned to Calla and Persephone. “Ring a bell with either of you?”  
  
Persephone stuck a finger straight in the air. “I forgot about my pie crust.” And so she withdrew from the room.   
  
Calla said, “I’d have to think about it. I’m not good with specifics.”  
  
There was a small smile on Gansey’s face that meant she knew they were lying.  
  
“I’ll look into it.” Maura said. “Leave your number, and I’ll call you if I find anything.  
  
Gansey replied coolly but politely. “That’s alright. How much for the reading?”  
  
Maura stood. “Just twenty.”  
  
Blue thought that this ought to be illegal. Gansey had clearly spent more than twenty dollars on the buttons of her shirt.  
  
She frowned at Maura over the top of her wallet. Blue could see a drivers licence through a clear window, and the name printed there looked a lot longer than _Gansey._ It seemed that that was not all there is. “Twenty?”  
  
“Each.” Blue added.  
  
Calla coughed once, in a way that was totally not suspicious.  
  
Gansey’s face cleared and she handed over sixty dollars. This was clearly more what she’d expected to pay.  
  
Alison’s eyes followed Blue sharply, and he felt slightly guilty. Not about overcharging, he thought that was fair, but about his mother’s lie.   
  
“I’ll show you out.” Maura said, clearly eager to have them out of her house. Gansey looked the same, but her face changed. She spent a little while putting her wallet back into her bag.   
  
She looked at her Maura. “Look, we’re all adults here.”  
  
Calla made a noise in disagreement.   
  
Gansey set her shoulders and continued. “So I think we deserve the truth. You can tell me that you don’t want to help, but don’t lie to me.”  
  
It was both a brave and incredibly arrogant thing to say.   
  
Maura said, “I know something. I just don’t want to help you.”   
  
Calla looked delighted. Blue felt his mouth open and closed it.   
  
Gansey just nodded. “All right then. We’ll let ourselves out.”  
  
And they did. Alison sent Blue a last look that he couldn’t interpret. A minute later, the Camaro’s tyres squeaked and the engine revved.   
  
Blue whirled to his mother. “ _Mom!”  
  
_ “Maura.” Calla said, grinning. “That was very rude. I liked it.”  
  
Maura turned to Blue like Calla hadn’t spoken. “I don’t want you to ever see her again.  
  
Indignantly, Blue said, “Whatever happened to ‘children shouldn’t be given orders’?”  
  
“That was before Gansey.” Maura said, spinning the Death card. “This is the same thing as me telling you to not walk in front of a bus.”  
  
Several comebacks fought their way to the front of Blue’s mind, before he settled on, “Why? Neeve didn’t see me on the corpse road. I’m not going to die this year.”  
  
“There are worse fates than death.” Maura said, beginning to count on her fingers. “Dismemberment, paralysis, endless psychological trauma, others. When your mother says don’t walk in front of a bus, she has a reason. Theres something wrong with those girls.”  
  
From the kitchen, Persephone said. “If someone had stopped you from walking in front of a bus, Maura, Blue wouldn’t be here.”  
  
Maura frowned at the doorway to the kitchen. “The best case scenario is you make friends with a girl destined to die.”  
  
Calla, in a mightily knowing way, said, “Ah, now I see.”  
  
“Don’t psychoanalyse me.” Maura said.  
  
“I already have. That’s why I said ‘ah’”  
  
His mother sneered uncharacteristically, then asked Calla. “What did you see when you touched that raven girl?”  
  
“They’re all raven girls.” Blue said.  
  
“She’s more raven than the others.”  
  
Calla swiped her fingers across her shirt, as though dusting the memory of Aidan’s tattoo from them. “Its like scrying into that weird space. Remember the woman pregnant with quadruplets? It was like that but a lot worse.”  
  
“She’s pregnant?” Blue asked. He slightly doubted anyone could get close enough to _get_ her pregnant without being cut.  
  
“She’s creating.” Calls said. “Which means that space is also creating.   
  
Blue wondered what Calla meant by creating. _He_ was always creating, taking old things and transforming them into something new. This was what most people would define _creative_ with.  
  
He did, however, suspect that this wasn’t how Calla would define it. Calla meant it by its true meaning: to make a thing where before there had been nothing.  
  
Maura caught Blue’s expression. “I’ve never told you to do anything before, Blue, but I’m telling you now. Stay away from them.”


	13. i know that he's killing me for mercy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Murder Song (5,4,3,2,1) by AURORA. all the songs I use are titles are on my spotify, on a playlist titled "the raven boys", with little bee emojis. the cover is black and white rendition of ronans tattoo, if you're interested.

Days and days later, Blue woke up just before the sun came up.  
  
His mind was full of thoughts of Alison’s sharply elegant features and the memory of Gansey’s bowed head, just as it had been every day since the reading. Blue couldn’t stop replaying the episode over and over and _over_ again in his mind. Calla’s aggressive response to Aidan, Alison and Gansey’s private conversation, and the fact that Gansey was more than a spirit on the corpse road. It wasn’t just the girls that had him concerned. It wasn’t that it didn’t seem likely that Alison would ever call now. No, the thing that pinched like a collar was that his mother had forbiden him from doing something.   
  
Blue pushed away the blankets. He wasn’t going to wallow any longer.   
  
Like most people, he had a fondness for the strange architecture of 300 Fox Way. Though, unlike most people, it was a fondness born not of feeling, but of nostalgia. However, his feelings for the garden outside was much more than that of the house. A large canopy of leaves was attached to a beech tree, sheltering the entire garden. He had a bag full of memories from sitting by the smooth trunk and listening to the rain tap on the dense thicket of leaves. When he stood under the beech, he felt as though he _was_ the beech.  
  
With a small sigh, he made his way down to the kitchen, and out the back door. The garden was its own tiny world, with the tall fence covered in honeysuckle, the blocked light and the canopy of leaves. Usually he would wait several long minutes for his eyes to adjust to the dimness, but not tonight.  
  
No, not tonight, because tonight an eerie light flickered at the base of the tree. Blue hesitated just outside the door, trying to come up with a logical reason for the sputtering light. Laying a hand on the side of the house, he leant forward. From here, he saw a half-melted candle around the other side of the tree.  
  
Blue took a step off the patio, and then another, and then he glanced back to see if anyone from the house was watching him. Whose project was this? A metre away from the candle, nestled between roots, was a pool of black water. It reflected the light, as if another candle was lit under the surface.   
  
Blue held his breath as he took another step.  
  
Neeve, in a loose skirt and jumper, was knelt by the tree with her pretty hands folded on her lap. She was as motionless as the tree.  
  
Blue expelled his breath in one rush when he saw her, but then he lifted his eyes to Neeve’s barely visible face and his breath jerked out once more, as if awoken by fresh surprise.  
  
“Oh, sorry,” Blue breathed, “I didn’t know you were out here.”  
  
Neeve didn’t reply. When Blue looked closer, he saw that’s Neeve’s eyes were completely unfocused. However, it was Neeve’s eyebrows that really unnerved Blue. They were somehow completely devoid of emotion, two flat lines waiting for input and getting none.  
  
Blue’s first thought was that Neeve was having some sort of stroke. Weren’t there those kinds of strokes where one of the symptoms was sitting completely motionless? What were they called? – but then he remembered the bowl of cran-grape juice, and realised that it was more likely that he’d interrupted some kind of meditation.   
  
It didn’t look like any meditation he’d seen before. It looked rather like... a ritual. His mother didn’t do rituals. Maura had once hotly informed a client, _I am not a witch_. She had also sadly told Persephone, _I am not a witch_. But maybe Neeve was. Blue wasn’t sure about the rules involving this kind of stuff.   
  
“Who’s there?” Neeve asked.  
  
It was not Neeve’s money. It was something deeper and further away and not from this world.  
  
A shiver ran up Blue’s spine.  
  
“Come into the light.” Neeve said.  
  
The water moved in the roots, or maybe the reflection of the candle moved. Blue cast his gaze wider, and saw a five-pointed star encircling the beech tree. One point was the candle, and another was the pool of dark water. Two of the other points were taken up by an unlit candle and an empty bowl. At first, Blue thought he miscalculated, and it wasn’t a five-point star at all, but then he realised that the fifth point was Neeve herself.  
  
“I know you’re there.” Not-Neeve said, in that strange far away voice. It was the kind of voice that sounded like a cave where no sunlight reached. “I can smell you.”  
  
The sentence crawled over the back of Blue’s neck very slowly, inside his skin. He was very tempted to scratch it, for it was such a real creeping feeling.  
  
He wanted to leave, to go inside and leave Neeve and her creepy voice behind and go back to bed, but he didn’t want to leave if something happened-  
  
He didn’t _want_ to think it, but he did. He didn’t want to leave if something _had her_.  
  
“I’m here.” Blue said.  
  
The candle flamed stretched longly.   
  
Not-Neeve asked, “What is your name?”  
  
Blue had just realised that he wasn’t sure if Neeve’s mouth moved when she talked.  
  
“Neeve.” Blue lied.  
  
“Come where I can see you.”  
  
There was something moving under the surface of black water. The water was reflecting colours that the candle did not cast.  
  
Blue shivered and said, “I’m invisible.”  
  
“Ahhhh,” Not-Neeve sighed.  
  
“Who are you?” Blue asked.  
  
The candle was so long that it was nearly at breaking point. It did not reach for the sky, but for Blue.  
  
“Neeve.” Not-Neeve answered.  
  
There was something crafty and malicious to the voice now, something knowing and something that made Blue want to check over his shoulder twice. Yet he couldn’t look away from the candle, because he was afraid the candle would burn him if he looked away.  
  
“Where are you?” Blue asked.  
  
“On the corpse road.” Not-Neeve said. No, she didn’t say it, she _growled_ it.  
  
Blue was abruptly aware of how his breath fogged in the air. Goosebumps prickled at his arms almost painfully. In the dim light from the candle, he saw that Neeve’s breath was doing the same.   
  
The cloud of Neeve’s breath parted over the dark water, like something physical was trying to rise from the water and break the path of the her breath.  
  
Rushing forward in one great surge, Blue kicked over the empty bown, knocked over the unlit candle and kicked dirt at the dark pool.  
  
The candle went out.  
  
There was a moment of complete darkness and silence. Blue didn’t feel alone, despite the silence and the blackness. It was a terrible feeling.  
  
 _I am inside a bubble_ , he thought furiously. _I am in a fortress. There is glass all alround me. I can see out but nothing can get in. I am completely untouchable._ He recited all the visuals Maura had taught him over the years, to protect him from a psychic attacks. It felt like nothing compared to the voice that had come from Neeve.   
  
But there was nothing. There were no goosebumps on his arm. He had relaxed into the darkness enough for him to be able to see. Neeve was still kneeling by the pool of the water.  
  
“Neeve,” whispered Blue.  
  
For an entire moment, nothing happened. Then Neeve lifted her chin and her hands.   
  
_Please be Neeve. Please be Neeve._  
  
Blue’s entire body was ready to run away.  
  
Then he saw that Neeve’s eyebrows were no longer the emotionless lines, they were firm over her eyes, and her hands were quivering. Blue let out a small sigh.  
  
“Blue?” Neeve asked. Her voice was rather normal. Then, with understanding, she said, “ _Oh,_ you won’t tell your mother about this?”  
  
Blue stared at her, resisting the urge to stamp his foot, “I absolutely will! What the hell was _that_? What were you doing.” Now that he had time to think it over, he realised that he was terrified. His heart was still pounding.  
  
Neeve looked at the broken pentagram and the knocked over candle, “I was scrying.”  
  
Her mild voice only fuelled Blue’s anger.  
  
“Scrying is what you did earlier. This was not that!”  
  
“I was scrying into the space I couldn’t scry to later. I was hoping to make conversation with someone who was in it to find out what it was.”  
  
Blue’s voice was not at all as steady as he’d like. “It _spoke_. It wasn’t _you_ when I came out here.”  
  
“Well,” said Neeve, sounding just a little angry, “that was your fault. You make everything stronger. I wasn’t expecting you to be present, or I would’ve...”  
  
She trailed off and looked at the half-melted stub of the candle, her head tilted to one side. It wasn’t much of a human gesture, and it made Blue remember the nasty chill he had gotten earlier.   
  
“Would’ve what?” He demanded. He was just a little angry too, that he was being blamed for whatever had just occurred. “What even _was_ that? It said it was on the corpse road. Does it mean it’s the same thing as the ley line?”  
  
That would mean Gansey was right. It also meant that Blue knew where the ley line ran, because she had seen Gansey’s spirit on the corpse road just a few days prior.  
  
“It’s why it’s so easy to be a psychic in Henrietta.” Neeve said, “The energy is very strong.”  
  
“Energy, as in my energy?” Blue asked.  
  
Neeve did a complicated hand gesture before picking up the half-melted candle and pinching the wick to make sure it was extinguished properly. “Yes, energy like your energy I suppose. It feeds things. How did you put it? It makes all the conversations louder, the lightbulbs brighter. Everything that needs energy to stay alive wants, craves more. Just like they crave your energy.”  
  
“What did you see?” Blue asked, “When you were doing whatever you were doing.”  
  
“Scrying,” Neeve supplied, though Blue still wasn’t sure if that really was what it was. “There’s someone who knows your name there. And there is someone else who is looking for the thing you’re looking for.”  
  
“That _I’m_ looking for!” Blue echoed. There wasn’t anything that he was looking for. That was, unless Neeve was talking about the ever mysterious Glendower. He recalled the connection he had felt when tangled in the web of raven girls, sleeping kings and ley lines. He recalled his mother telling him to stay away.  
  
“Yes, you know what it is,” Neeve replied mildly, “Everything is so much cleaner now.”   
  
Something cold settled inside him as he thought of the stretching candle flame and the moving water. “You haven’t said what was in the pool yet.”  
  
Neeve looked up at Blue, gaze unbreakable, as she held all her supplies close to her bosom. She had the kind of gaze that could last an eternity.  
  
She said, “That’s because I don’t know.”


	14. I want a perfect body, I want a oerfect soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Creep by Radiohead

The next afternoon, Blue walked barefoot to the street in front of 300 Fox Way, and sat cross-legged on the gravel to wait for Calla. Neeve had been locked away in her room all day and Maura had been doing card readings for a group of widows. And so Blue had taken all day to contemplate what to do about finding Neeve ‘scrying’. He had come to the conclusion that what to do involved Calla.  
  
He was just getting restless when Calla’s carpool pulled up to the curb.  
  
“Are you putting yourself out with the trash?” Calla asked as she climbed out of the car. She was wearing a dress that was respectable in an odd way, with DIYed rhinestone scandals. She made a weird and gesture at the driver, then turned to Blue as the car drove off.   
  
“I need to ask you a question.” Blue said, standing up.”  
  
“Is it a question that sounds better next to the trash? Hold this for me.” Calla wrestled one of the bags off her arm and handed it to Blue, who slung it over his own arm. Calla smelled like jasmine and chilli peppers, which meant that she hadn’t had a good day at work. Blue still wasn’t entirely sure what Calla actually _did_ for a living, but he knew that it had something to with Aglionby and paperwork, and that she spent most of her time cursing at students, often on weekends. Whatever she did, it mean rewarding herself with Mexican food on bad days.  
  
Calla stomped up the stairs.  
  
Blue trailed behind her, the bag swinging wildly. It felt like it had books or bricks in it. “The house is full.”  
  
Calla had one eyebrow raised, “It’s always full.”  
  
They were nearly at the front door. Inside the house, every room was filled with aunts and cousins and family friends. Persephone’s angry PhD music was already audible. The only chance for privacy was outside.  
  
Blue said, “I want to know why Neeve’s really here.”  
  
Calla stopped, and looked at Blue over her shoulder. “Well, excuse you,” She said unpleasantly, “I’d like to know how to cure cancer, but no one’s telling me that.”  
  
Blue clutched at Calla’s bag like it’s a hostage. “I’m not a child anymore. Maybe everyone else can see what they want in a pack of cards, but I’m sick of being left in the dark.”  
  
Both of Calla’s eyebrows were raised.   
  
“Damn straight.” Calla agreed, “I was wondering when you were going to have your rebellious phase. Why aren’t you asking Maura?”  
  
“I’m still mad at her for telling me what to do.”  
  
Calla said, “Take another bag. What do you propose?”  
  
Blue accepted another bag. This one was green and floral and somehow managed to have pointed corners. “That you just tell me what I want to know.”  
  
Calla used for one of her of her newly freed hands to tap her bottom lip. Both her lip and the nail she used to tap it with were a bright shade of electric blue. “The only thing is, Blue, is that I’m not sure either of us have been told the truth.”  
  
Blue didn’t know what to feel about that. The idea of anyone lying to Calla or Maura or Persephone seemed ludicrous. Even if they didn’t know the truth, they’d uncover a lie. However, there did seem to be something incredibly secretive about Neeve, especially about her doing rituals at night, when she thought no-one would see her.  
  
Calla said, “She was supposed to be looking for someone.”  
  
“My father.” Blue guessed.  
  
Calla didn’t say _no_ , nor did she say , nor did she say _yes_. Instead, she replied, “But I think it’s something else now that she’s stayed in Henrietta for a while.  
  
They regarded each other for a long moment, partners in crime.   
  
“My proposition is different then,” Blue said finally, “We go through Neeve’s stuff. You hold it, I stand there.”  
  
Calla’s mouth became even smaller. Her psychometric revelations were often vague, but if Blue was there, it would be so much stronger. It had certainly been stronger when she had touched Ronan’s tattoo. If she touched Neeve’s things, they might get some true, concrete answers.   
  
“Take this bag.” Calls said handing the last one over. It was made of green leather and was impossibly heavy, as if it held the entire house. While Blue figured out how to carry it, Calla crossed her arms and tapped her pink-red nails against the dark skin of her arm.  
  
“She’d have to be out of her room for an hour, at least.” Calla mused, “And Maura would have to be gone as well.”  
  
Maura was a large believer in multiple things, including personal privacy. If she knew what they were planning, they’d both be in trouble.  
  
“But you’re going to do it?”  
  
“I’ll found out more about their schedules today.” Calla said. “What’s this?” Her attention shifted to a van pulling up at the end of the street. Blue tilted his head at the same time as Calla to read the words painted on the side: **FLOWERS BY ANDI!** The driver, presumably Andi, rummaged around for a couple of minutes in the back of the van before coming out with the smallest flower arrangement and walking up to them.   
  
“Sure is hard to find this place!” said the woman.  
  
Calla pursed her lips, a product of her pure hatrid for anything that could be classed as small talk.  
  
“What’s all this?” Calla asked, waving her hand at the flowers dismissively.   
  
“This is for...” The woman fumbled for the card.  
  
“Orla.” Blue guessed, slightly resigned.  
  
Orla was always getting sent flowers by the various yearning men and women of Henrietta and the world. Not all of them sent flowers, though. Some sent packages and others sent fruit baskets. One time, rather memorably, a lovelorn man had sent an oil portrait of Orla. He had, however, painted it in portrait so that the viewer had a full view of Orla’s elegant neck; half-lidded eyes; classic cheekbones; and absolutely massive nose. It was her least favourite feature, and she’d broken up with him immediately.  
  
“Blue?” The woman asked, “Blue Sargent.”  
  
Blue, at first, didn’t realise that this didn’t meant the flowers were for _him._ The woman had thrust the flowers into Calla’s hands, who had in turn, disgustedly, thrust them into Blue’s, in exchange for her bags. The woman headed back to her van, and Blue studied the flowers. It was no more than a spray of baby’s breath around a white carnation. They smelled nicer than they looked.  
  
“The deliver must’ve cost more than the flowers.” Calla commented.  
  
Blue felt about the wiry stems to procure a card. On it, scrawled in a woman’s hand:  
  
  
 ** _I hope you still want me to call. – Allison  
  
  
_** Now the small bunch of flowers made sense. They matched Allison’s frayed jumper.   
  
“You’re blushing.” Calla said disapprovingly. With sarcasm, she added, “Whoever sent them really went all out, didn’t they.  
  
Blue smacked Calla’s arm, then gently touched the edge of the carnations petals. It was so light it was like he couldn’t feel anything at all. It was no portrait, spa retreat or fruit basket, but he couldn’t imagine Allison sending anything more. In fact, he hadn’t imagine Allison to send anything at all, but was oddly touched by _her_ sending _him_ the flowers. It was flipped on its head, and didn’t fit in at all. He loved it. “I think they’re pretty.”  
  
He bit his lip to keep his foolish side on the inside. He wanted to hug the flowers to his chest and dance in a circle, but that seemed very insensible.   
  
“Who are they?” Calla asked.  
  
“I’m being secretive.”   
  
Calla shook her head, but didn’t look entirely displeased. Blue suspected that very, very deep down, she was a romantic.  
  
“Calla?” Blue asked, “Do you think I should tell those raven girls were the corpse road is?”  
  
Calla gazed at Blue for a long time, almost a Neeve length gaze. Then she said, “What makes you think that I’m the one who can answer that question?”  
  
“Because you’re old.” Blue told her, “And you’re supposed to know things.”  
  
“What I know,” Calla said, “Is that you’ve already made your mind up.”  
  
Blue dropped his eyes to the ground. It wasn’t untrue that he was kept up at night by the thought of Gansey’s journal, and by the suggestion of something more from the world. He was also rather intrigued by the idea of a sleeping king lying underneath the Virginia soil.   
  
But more important than all of that, was his face on the page of cups, the rain-spattered shoulders of an Aglionby jumper and a voice saying _Gansey, that’s all there is._  
  
Once he’d seen her death laid out for him, and seen she was real, and found out that he supposedly had a part in it, there had never been a chance of him staying behind.   
  
“Don’t tell Mom,” Blue said.  
  
With an entirely noncommittal hum, Calls wrenched open the front door, leaving Blue and is flowers.   
  
_Today,_ Blue thought, _is the day I stop listening to the future, and start living in the present._  
  
“Blue if you get to know her-” Calla started. She was standing half-in the doorway. “You’d better guard you heart. Don’t forget that she’s destined to die.”


	15. are you, are you, coming to the tree?

At the same moment her flowers were being delivered, Allison was arriving at Monmouth via bicycle. Aidan and Charlotte were sat in the overgrown car park, building a ramp for something unholy.  
  
She tried multiple times to get her rusted kickstand to support the weight of the bike, before giving up and laying it down in the crab grass. She asked, “When do you think Gansey will get here?”  
  
Aidan didn’t answer immediately. She was lying as far underneath the BMW as she could manage, measuring the width of the tyres with a bright blue ruler. “Ten inches, Charlotte.”  
  
Charlotte, standing next to what was visible of Aidan, said, “Are you sure? That doesn’t seem right.”  
  
“Would I lie to you? It’s ten inches.” Aidan kicked out from beneath the car and stared up at Allison. She was wearing a vest top pulled low on her chest, probably to spite Gansey’s inability to grow what Aidan called ‘a rack’. “Who knows? When did she say?”  
  
“Three.”  
  
Aidan climbed to her feet and they both turned to watch Charlotte working with the plywood. However, _working with_ actually meant _staring_ at. She had her fingers spaced ten inches apart and was staring at the wood, confused. There weren’t any tools around.  
  
“What are you planning to do with these things?” Allison asked.  
  
Aidan smiled sharply. “Ramp. BMW. The fucking moon.”  
  
This was incredibly Aidan-like. Her room was filled with expensive toys, but like any other spoiled child she played outside with the dirt and mud.  
  
“The trajectory you’re building suggests the end of your suspension, not the moon.” Allison observed  
  
“I don’t need your back talk, science girl.”  
  
She probably didn’t. Aidan didn’t require physics, she could just intimidate the plywood into doing what she wanted. Allison crouched by her bike and tried to persuade the kickstand to work once more, to see if she could pry it free without snapping it off entirely.   
  
“What’s wrong with you, anyway?” Aidan asked.  
  
“I’m trying to decide whether or not to call Blue.” She said, though voicing the words was practically inviting ridicule from Aidan, but it was just one of those facts that needed to be acknowledged, or it would eat away at your brain.  
  
Charlotte said, “She sent him flowers.”  
  
“How do you know that?” Allison demanding, feeling hot with mortification.  
  
Charlotte smiled in an off-hand way. She kicked one of the wooden boards on the plywood, looking victorious.   
  
“That psychic’s kid? Didn’t realise that midgets were the Allison Parrish type.”  
  
Charlotte laughed breathily. She had a nearly soundless laugh.  
  
Aidan wasn’t being serious. Allison knew that, but she was becoming incredibly tired of Aidan’s uselessness. Since the day of the fistfight, she had gotten multiple notices slating her behaviour at Aglionby , and warning her that dire things would come if she didn’t improve her grades. But instead, she was outside building ramps.  
  
A lot of people envied Aidan’s money. Allison envied her time. To be as rich as Aidan was to be able to go to school and do nothing else, to have time as a luxury in which to do assignments and sleep. Allison would never admit it, but she was _tired._ She was tired of doing homework between her part-time jobs and the hunt for Glendower, tired of squeezing in sleep at her desk or curled up under threadbare blankets. And Aidan wasn’t tired of any of that.  
  
Two years ago, Allison made the decision to go to Aglionby. In her head, it was kind of because of Aidan. Her mother had sent her to the grocery store with her bank card. The only things she was purchasing were four cans of ravioli and a tube of toothpaste. Yet, the cashier had told her that the card didn’t have enough money to cover the purchase. Though this was not her fault, there was something incredibly humiliating about the whole ordeal. While she fumbled around, pretending as though she’d have cash to cover it, a girl with a shaved head at the next register swiped her card and collected her items in less than a minute  
  
Even the way the other girl had moved had come across, to Allison, as careless confidence. Shoulders rolled back, chin tilted, head high. A king’s daughter. The cashier swiped Allison’s card once more, both of them pretending that the card reader could have misread the magnetic strip, and Allison watched the girl swagger to a shiny black car and swing herself in. Through the open-door, Allison got a peek at the two other girls in the car, both wearing raven-breasted jumpers and smiles.  
  
She had had to leave the cans and toothpaste on the conveyer belt, eyes full of tears of shame that would never fall.   
  
She’d want to be someone else more than anything.  
  
In her head, that girl was Aidan, but in retrospect, Allison knew that it couldn’t have been her. She wouldn’t have been old enough to drive yet. It was just some other Aglionby student with a working credit card and an expensive card. The whole thing wasn’t the only reason Allison had decided to come to Aglionby, but it was the catalyst. The imagined memory of Aidan, careless and with fully intact pride, and Allison, humiliated and cowed with a line of old woman behind her.   
  
She still wasn’t the other girl at the register, but she was steps closer.   
  
Allison looked at her ratty old watch to see how late Gansey was. Then she told Aidan, “Give me your phone.”  
  
Aidan raised one eyebrow, but handed her the phone from the BMW’s hood.  
  
Allison punched in the psychic’s number. It rang just twice before a breathy voice picked up and said, “Allison?”  
  
Startled by her name, Allison replied, “Blue?” Though it was clearly a woman’s voice.  
  
“No,” said the woman, “Persephone.” Then to someone else, “Ten dollars, Orla. That was the bet. No, of course there isn’t a caller ID, see?” Then, to Allison once more, “Sorry about that. I’m terrible about competitions. You’re the coca-cola t-shirt one, aren’t you?”  
  
Allison was briefly confused before realising she was referring to the shirt he’d worn to the reading. “Oh. Yeah, that was me.”  
  
“How lovely. I’ll get Blue.”  
  
There was an uncomfortable silence while Persephone murmured incomprehensibly away from the receiver.  
  
“I didn’t think you’d call.” Said Blue.  
  
Allison must’ve not actually expected to talk to Blue, because the surprise she felt when she heard his voice made her stomach hollow out. Aidan smirked in a way that made her want to punch her arm.  
  
“I said I would.”  
  
“I thought you were waiting for me to make a move. Oh, uh, thanks for the flowers. They were pretty.” Then he hissed, “ _Orla, get out!”_  
  
“It seems busy there.”  
  
“It’s never not busy here. Three hundred and forty-two people live here and apparently they all want to be in this room right now. What are you doing today?” He asked very naturally, as if it were something they already did, talk on the phone like friends.  
  
This made it a lot easier for Allison to say, “Exploring. Do you want to come?”  
  
Aidan’s eyes widened. No matter what Blue said now, the phone call was worth it for the aghast horror on Aidan’s face.  
  
“What sort of exploring are you doing?”  
  
Allison shielded her eyes and looked toward the sky. She thought she could Gansey coming. “Mountains. What are your thoughts on helicopters.”  
  
There was a pause. “Ethically?”  
  
“As a mode of transportation.”  
  
“Well, they’re faster than camels but worse for the environment. Why, is there a helicopter in your future today?”  
  
“Yeah. Gansey wants to look for the ley line. They’re usually easier to spot from the air.”  
  
“And she just... has a helicopter.”  
  
“She’s Gansey.” Allison said as an explation.  
  
There was another pause. It was a thinking pause, in Allison’s opinion.  
  
“I’ll come, then. What exactly is this?”  
  
Allison replied truthfully, “I have no clue.”


	16. kiss me, kiss me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from Internet Gaming by WRENN

It was actually very easy to disobey Maura.  
  
Maura had very little experience disciplining her child, and Blue had very little experience being disciplined. There was absolutely nothing to stop Blue going with Allison when she met him in front of the house. He didn’t even feel guilty, yet, because he’d never had much experience in that either. The most remarkable thing, really, was how _hopeful_ he felt. He was going against his mother’s wishes, meeting with a _raven girl_ , of all people. Realistically, according to his rules, he should’ve been dreading it.   
  
But it was very difficult to imagine Allison as a raven girl was very difficult. When she greeted him, her hands were folded neatly in front of her middle, and she was scented with the dusty odour of Henrietta grass. Her bruise was older, and therefore more horrible to look at.  
  
“You look nice.” She said, walking with him down the pavement.  
  
He was uncertain if she was being serious. He wore heavy boots he’d found at a thrift store (he had attacked them with splatters of bright paint in the general pattern of eyes) and a shirt he had made a few months earlier out of multiple other shirts that he’d stolen from around the house. One of them was Orla’s, a small stripe of deep red. Another was Persephone’s, frothy and white. Another was Calla’s with half the logo from a rock band. In comparison, it made Allison look downright conservative. They did not, Blue thought with unease, look anything like a couple.  
  
“Thanks,” He said, and then before he could lose his nerve, “Why did you want my nerve?”  
  
Allison kept walking, but she didn’t look away. She seemed shy, and then she didn’t. “Why wouldn’t I?”   
  
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Blue said, his cheeks slightly warm. “Because I know you’re going to think that I feel bad about it, and I don’t.”  
  
“Alright.”  
  
“Because I’m not handsome, not in the ways raven girls like.”  
  
“I’m a raven girl.” Said Allison.  
  
Allison didn’t seem to be a raven girl like all the other raven girls.   
  
“I think you’re handsome.” She said.  
  
When she said it, he heard her Virginia accent for the time. She sanded half the letters right off the word _handsome,_ so it became _andsum_. Blue considered what she had said, and then considered it a little more.  
  
“ _Pshaw.”_ He said finally. He felt weirdly undone, like her words had spun some tight thread between them. He felt like he had to ease the tension. “Thanks. I think you’re handsome, too.”  
  
She laughed a surprised laugh.  
  
“I have another question,” Blue said, “Do you remember what my mother said to Gansey before she left?”  
  
Allison’s face made it clear that she did.  
  
“Yeah,” Blue breathed in deeply, “She said she wouldn’t help. _I_ said no such thing.”  
  
After she had called, he had hastily scrawled a badly drawn map to the unnamed church where he’d sat with Neeve of St. Mark’s Eve. It was no more than a few scratched parallel lines for the main road, spidery words to indicate street names, and a square labelled THE CHURCH.  
  
He handed Allison the slip of paper, unimpressive as it was, and then, from his bag, he gave her Gansey’s journal.  
  
Allison stopped dead. She frowned at the thing in her hands, holding it as if it were made from glass, as if it were something incredibly important her. Or, perhaps, it was something incredibly important to someone important to her. He very desperately wanted her to both trust and respect him, and he could tell from her face that he had little time to accomplish both.  
  
“Gansey left it at Nino’s.” He said quickly. “The book. I should’ve given it back to the reading, but – you saw my mom. She isn’t normally like that. I didn’t know what to say. Here’s the thing... I want to be in on this thing that you’re doing. If there’s really something supernatural going on, I want to see it.”  
  
Allison only asked, “Why?”  
  
With her there was never any other option but the truth. Blue didn’t think that she would stand for anything else. “I’m the only person in my family who isn’t psychic. Maybe it’s because I’m a guy – who knows. You heard what my mom said, I just make things louder for _actual_ psychics. If magic exists, I want to see it. Just once.”  
  
“You’re as bad as Gansey.” Allison said, though she didn’t seem to think this was very bad at all. “She doesn’t need anything but to know that its real.”  
  
She titled the paper this way and that. Blue let out a sigh, not realising how still Allison had become until she started moving again. The tension seemed to bleed out of the air.  
  
“That’s the way to the co- ley line.” He explained, “the church is on the ley line.”  
  
“You’re sure?”  
  
Blue gave him a truly withering look, “Either you believe me or not. _You’re_ the one who asked me to come ‘exploring’.”  
  
Allison’s face melted into a grin. It was an expression so unlike her usual that all her features seemed to shift to accommodate it. “You don’t do anything quiet, do you?”  
  
The way she said it, he could tell that he was impressed with him in the way that people were impressed with Orla. Blue liked this reaction a lot, especially since he hadn’t needed to do anything. “Nothing worth doing is done quietly.”  
  
“Well,” she said, “I think you’ll find that I do everything quietly. If you’re alright with that, we’ll be fine.”  
  
___  
  
As it turned out, Blue had either walked or biked past Gansey’s apartment every day, on the way to school or Nino’s. As they walked towards the gargantuan warehouse, he saw the hideously orange Camaro in the overgrown car park and, only a metre away from it, a navy blue helicopter. It was parked there as easily as one would park an SUV.  
  
Blue stopped in his tracks and breathed out, “Wow.”  
  
“I know.” Said Allison.  
  
And here was Gansey. Blue, once again, had a horrible moment of connection between the girl in front of him, and the spirit on the corpse road.  
  
“ _Finally!”_ She shouted, jogging towards them. She was still wearing her truly horrid shoes, paired with a knee-length khaki skirt and a bright blue polo shirt. She looked as if she was dressed for an emergency, as long as the emergency was falling onto a yacht, or something of the sort. In her hand, she held a container of organic apple juice.  
  
She pointed the juice at Blue. “Are you coming with?”  
  
Just like the reading, Blue felt small and cheap just by being around her. He tried to wrangle his accent as best as possible before she answered, “Coming along in the helicopter you just have lying around, you mean?”  
  
Gansey slung a leather backpack under her fine-cotton covered shoulders. Her smile was gracious and as inclusive as it could be, despite the fact that his mother had only recently refused to help her in her search. “You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”  
  
Behind her, the helicopter roared to life. Allison offered Gansey the journal, who looked startled. A bit of her perfect composure slid, revealing enough of whatever was underneath the President Mobile Phone mask.  
  
“Where was it?” Gansey yelled.  
  
And she needed to yell. Now that the helicopter was running, its blades didn’t so much roar as scream.   
  
Allison pointed to Blue.  
  
“Thanks.” Gansey shouted at him. It was a default answer, he saw. Gansey fell back on the power that she held in politeness, to cover up her shock. She was also watching Allison, taking her cues from her as has to react to him. Allison nodded once, briefly, and the mask slipped again. Blue wondered is President Mobile Phone ever vanished when she was around her friends.   
  
The air, disrupted by the helicopter, rumbled all around them. Blue had to hold on to the hem of his shirt, scared it would blow away. He asked, “Is that thing safe?”  
  
“Safe as life.” Gansey responded, “Allison, we’re behind schedule! Blue, if you’re coming, you better hold tight to your righteousness, and hop on board.” As she turned, her shirt too flapped against her back.  
  
Blue was nervous now. He wasn’t scared, not exactly. It was more that he hadn’t mentally prepared himself to be leaving sweet ground with a bunch of Aglionby girls. The helicopter, for all its size and noise, seemed a rather insubstantial thing to trust his life to, and the girls were all strangers. Now it truly felt as though he was disobeying Maura.  
  
“I’ve never flown.” He told Allison, shouting to be heard over the helicopter blades.  
  
“Ever?” Allison shouted back.  
  
He shook his head, an answer, but also an attempt to rid his face of the hair flying into it. Allison put her mouth right next to his ear as to be heard. She smelled like cheap shampoo and summer heat. He felt an unwelcome tickle travel from his belly button to the tips of his toes.  
  
“I’ve only flown once,” She said into his ear, breath blowing hot over his skin. He had a paralysing thought – _this is how close a kiss is._ It felt, he thought, a dangerous thing. “I hated every second of it.”  
  
A moment passed, both of them motionless. He needed to tell her, just in case, that she couldn’t kiss him. But how would he tell a girl that he barely knew that she couldn’t kiss him, just in case she die, before he even knew if she _wanted_ to kiss him?  
  
She took Blue’s hand. Her palm was already sweaty. She really did hate flying.  
  
Gansey turned from where she stood at the helicopter door, smile complicated when she spotted their intertwined hands.  
  
“I hate this.” Allison yelled to Gansey.  
  
“I know.” Gansey yelled back.  
  
Inside the helicopter, there was room for three passengers on a bench seat in the back, and a seat next to the pilot. It would have resembled the back seat of a very long car, if the seat belts didn’t have five-point fasteners that looked like they belonged in a sci-fi show. Blue didn’t like to think about why passengers had to be strapped down to securely. Maybe they were expecting people to be bouncing against the ceiling.  
  
Aidan, the raven girl who was more raven than the others, was already installed in the window seat. She didn’t smile when she looked up. Allison, with a punch to Aidan’s arm, took the middle seat, leaving Blue with the other window seat. He toyed with the belt straps, and Gansey leaned in to the cabin to bump fists with Allison.  
  
A few minutes later, when Gansey climbed into the front seat by the pilot, Blue saw that she was grinning ear to ear, earnest to the exact, incredibly excited at the prospect of going where they were. It was nothing at all like the polished demeanor she presented earlier. It was some private joy that he managed to be in on, just by being there. Just like that, Blue felt excited too.  
  
Allison leaned toward him, as if she were going to say something. Instead she shook her head, smiling, as if Gansey was a joke too hard to explain.  
  
In the front, Gansey turned to the pilot. It surprised Blue slightly to see a young man, with incredibly neat hair for a pilot, and an impressively straight nose sitting in the front seat. He seemed much more interested in the proximity of Allison and Blue than Gansey had.  
  
The pilot shouted at Gansey, “Aren’t you going to introduce us, Essie?”  
  
Gansey made a face.  
  
“Blue,” She said anyway, “I’d like you to meet my brother, Richard.”  
  



	17. so you wanna die young

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Die Young by Max Frost

Gansey enjoyed most things about flying. She like airports, with their masses of people and ambiguous time zone; she liked planes, with their thick-paned windows and upright chairs; she liked the way the plane charged down the runway, because it reminded her of how the Camaro pressed her into the driver’s seat when she hit the gas; she liked all the little buttons in the helicopter cockpit; and the safety of the seatbelts. Gansey derived a lot of pleasure from achieving goals, and even more pleasure from achieving those goals efficiently. There was nothing more efficient then flying to your goals.  
  
Now that they were in the air, Gansey felt slightly anxious. With Blue present, she was starting to believe that she might have overdone it with the helicopter. She wondered if it would make Blue feel worse or better if she told him that it was Helen’s helicopter, and that she hadn’t paid anything. Probably worse. Keeping her vow to do no harm with her words, she kept her mouth shut.  
  
“There they are,” Richard’s voice said directly into Gansey’s ears, via the headsets they all had to wear to be heard over the ceaseless noise, “Gansey’s one true love.”  
  
Aidan’s snort was barely audible, but Gansey had heard it enough to know it was there.  
  
Blue said, “They must be pretty big to be seen from here.”  
  
“Henrietta,” Richard replied, “They’re getting married. No dates been set.  
  
“If you’re going to embarrass me, I’ll throw you out and fly myself.” Gansey said. This was not something that she would _actually_ do. Not only would she not push Richard out of the helicopter at this altitude, it was also illegal for them all to fly without him. Truth be told, she walso wasn’t very good at flying. This was not for lack of trying, though, she just seemed to lack the ability to orient herself both vertically and horizontally, which led to a large amount of disagreements with trees.  
  
“Did you get Mom a birthday present?” Richard asked.  
  
“Yes.” Gansey responded, “Myself.”  
  
Richard said drily, “The gift that keeps on giving.”  
  
She said, “I don’t think that underage children are required to get gifts for their parents. Technically, I’m a dependant.”  
  
“You, a dependant!” Richard laughed. He had a rather intimidating laugh that made everyone around feel like they were the brunt of it. “You haven’t been dependant since you were a toddler. You went straight from four years old to old woman with a studio apartment.”  
  
Gansey made a dismissive hand gesture. Her brother was known for her rather impressive hyperbole, “What did _you_ get her?”  
  
“It’s a surprise.” He said loftily.   
  
“That means its glassware.”  
  
Gansey’s mother collected rare painted plates with the same obsessive fever that Gansey collected facts about Glendower. She, personally, had a hard time seeing the allure in a plate that could no longer serve its original purpose.  
  
Richard’s face was stony, “I don’t want to hear it. You didn’t even get her anything.”  
  
“I didn’t say anything about it!”  
  
“You called it glassware.”  
  
“Then what should I have called it?”  
  
“They’re not all glass. The one I’ve found her isn’t glass.”  
  
Gansey pursed her lips, “Then she won’t like it.”  
  
Richard’s face shifted from stony to incredibly stony. He glowered at the GPS. Gansey didn’t want to think about how much time he had invested in his non-glass plate.   
  
Richard was still silent, so Gansey began to think about Blue. There was something about him that discomfited her, but she couldn’t quite think of what it was. Gansey took a mint leaf from his pocket and put it in her mouth, watching the Henrietta road snake underneath her. What _was_ it about Blue? Allison wasn’t suspicious of him, and she was suspicious of almost everything. But, she was also clearly infatuated. This was unfamiliar ground for Gansey.  
  
“Allison.” She said. There was no answer, so she twisted in her seat to look at the back bench. Allison’s headphones were looped around her neck, and she was leaning over Blue, pointing at the ground below. Blue’s shirt was stretched up on the side, revealing a triangle of skin. Allison’s hand was braced on the back of the seat a few centimetres away. There was nothing intimate about the way that they were sat, but it made Gansey feel odd, as though she had heard an unpleasant comment about her, and had forgotten the words but not the way they made her feel.  
  
“Allison!” Gansey shouted.  
  
Her friend’s head jerked up, startled. She scrambled to put her headset back on. Her voice came through the headphones. “Have you stopped talking about your mom’s plates?”  
  
“Yes, very. Where should we go this time? I was thinking maybe we should go back to the church where I recorded the voice.   
  
Allison handed Gansey a crinkled piece of paper.  
  
Gansey flattened the paper to reveal a crude map. “What’s this?”  
  
“Blue.”  
  
Gansey looked at him intently, trying to decide if he was going to gain anything from misleading them. He didn’t flinch from her gaze. She turned back around and showed her sister the map, “Make that happen, Richard.”  
  
Richard banked to follow the new direction. The church Blue was directing them to was probably forty minutes away, but the helicopter made it fifteen. Without a small noise from Blue, Gansey would’ve missed it. It was decrepit and overgrown, more ruin than. There was an old, _old_ wall visible around it, and an impression on the ground where another wall must’ve been. “That’s it.”  
  
“That’s all there is left.”  
  
Something inside Gansey went very still and silent.   
  
She said, “What did you just say?”  
  
“I mean, it’s a ruin but-”  
  
“No,” She interrupted, “Say precisely what you said before. Please.”  
  
Blue looked at Allison, who shrugged. “I don’t remember exactly what I said. Uh... that’s all there is?”  
  
 _That’s all.  
  
Is that all?  
  
_That was what had been nagging her all this time. She _knew_ he recognised her voice. She recognised that cadence, that Henrietta accent.  
  
It was Blue’s voice on the recorder.  
  
 _Gansey.  
  
Is that all?  
  
That’s all there is.  
  
_“I’m not made of fuel,” Richard snapped, as if he had told her once and she had missed her. Perhaps she had. “Tell me where to go from here.”  
  
 _What does this mean?_ Once more, she began to feel the press of responsibility, awe, something bigger than herself.   
  
“What’s the lay of the line, Blue?” Allison asked.  
  
Blue, who had his thumb and forefinger pressed against the glass, as if to measure something, said, “There. Toward the mountains. Do you see those two oak trees? Fly toward those. The church is one point and the other is right between those trees. If we make a straight line between them, that’s the path.”  
  
“Are you certain?” Richard asked, “I only have an hour and a half of fuel.”  
  
Blue sounded indignant, “I wouldn’t have said if I wasn’t sure.”  
  
Richard smiled faintly and pushed the helicopter toward where Blue indicated.  
  
“Blue.”  
  
It was Aidan’s voice, from the first time. Everyone, even Richard, turned towards her. Her head was cocked in a way that said _dangerous._ Her eyes were sharp as she stared at Blue. She asked, “Do you know Gansey?”  
  
Gansey remember Aidan leaning against the Pig, playing the recording over and over again.  
  
Blue looked defensive under their stares, but he held Aidan’s gaze. Reluctantly, he said, “Only her name.”  
  
With her fingers linked loosely together, elbows on her knees, Aidan leaned forward across Allison to be closer to Blue. She could be unbelievably threatening.  
  
To his credit, Blue didn’t back down. His cheeks were dark, but he said, “First of all, get out of my face.”  
  
“What if I don’t?”  
  
“Aidan.” Gansey said.  
  
Aidan sat back.  
  
“I would like to know, though.” Gansey said. Her heart was weightless in her chest.  
  
Blue looked down and pulled at the hem of his Frankenstein shirt. Finally, he said, “That’s fair, I guess.” He glared at Aidan angrily. “But _that_ isn’t the way to get me to say anything. Next time she gets in my face, I’m letting you find this thing on your own. I’ll – look, I’ll tell you how I know your name if you explain what that symbol in your journal is.”  
  
“Since when do we negotiate with terrorists?” Aidan sneered.  
  
“Since when am I a terrorist?” Blue demanded. He looked like, if he was standing on a solid surface, he might stamp his foot. “Seems to me that I came to y’all with something you guys wanted, and you’re being dicks about it.”  
  
“Not all of us.” Said Allison.  
  
“I am not being a dick.” Gansey said. He was uncomfortable with the idea that he didn’t like her. “Now, what do you want to know?”  
  
Blue held his hand out. “Hold on, I’ll show you what I mean.”  
  
Gansey handed him the journal. Leafing through the pages, he turned it to her. The page shown detailed an artefact she had found in Pennsylvania.   
  
“I believe,” She said, “That that is a man chasing a car.”  
  
“Not that. This.” He pointed to another doodle.  
  
“Oh. They’re ley lines.” She stretched out a hand for the journal. She was hyperaware of how he watched her. She didn’t think he missed the way her thumb and finger easily supported the two cover pages, and how her left hand curved familiarly around the spine. The journal and Gansey were clearly long-acquainted, and she wanted him to know.  
  
 _This is me. The real me_.  
  
She didn’t want to analyse the source of this impulse too hard. She focused on flipping through the journal. It took no time at all to find the page she wanted – a map on the USA.  
  
She traced a finger over a line that stretched through New York and Washington DC. Another intersecting line that stretched from Boston to St Louis. A third cut horizontally through the first two, stretching through Virginia and Kentucky. There was, as there always was, something soothing about tracing the lines, something that reminded her of scavenger hunts and childhood drawings.   
  
“These are the three main lines,” Gansey told him, “The ones that seem to matter.”  
  
“Matter how?”  
  
“How much did you read.”  
  
“Some. Um, a lot. Most.”  
  
She continued, “The ones that matter in finding Glendower. The line across Virginia is the one that connects us to the UK. The United Kingdom.”  
  
Blue rolled his eyes hard enough he could’ve pulled a muscle. “I know what the UK is, thank you very much. The public school education system isn’t _that_ bad.”  
  
She’d manage to offend again, with no effort. “Of course not. Those others have a bunch of unusual sightings on them.”  
  
“Like?”  
  
“Mothmen, poltergeists, black dogs, that kind of thing. Paranormal stuff.”  
  
“My mother drew that shape,” Blue said, “So did Nee- another woman at the house. I didn’t know what it was, but I just knew it would be significant. That’s why I wanted to know.”  
  
“Now you.” Aidan said to him.  
  
“I – I saw Gansey’s spirit.” He said. “I’ve never seen one before, but I did now. I asked your name and you said “Gansey, that’s all there is.” Honestly, it’s part of the reason I wanted to come along.”  
  
This answered satisfied Gansey. Blue was, after all, the son of a psychic, and it also matched her own account of things. It did, however, strike her as a partial answer. Aidan must’ve thought the same, because he demanded, “Saw her where?”  
  
“When I was sitting outside with one of my half-aunts.” Blue told her.  
  
This seemed to satisfy Aidan. She asked, “Where’s the other half of her?”  
  
“Jesus, Aidan.” Said Allison, “Enough.”  
  
There was a moment of tense silence, occupied only by the droning of the helicopter blades. They were waiting, Gansey knew, for her verdict. Did she believe his answer, did she trust him, and should they follow his directions?  
  
His voice was on the recorder. She felt like this choice was taken from her hands. What she wanted to say, but didn’t because Richard was there, was, _You’re right, Aidan. It’s starting, something’s starting._ She was also thinking, _Tell me what you think of them, Alli. Tell me why you trust him. Don’t make me decide for once, I don’t know if I’m right_. But what she did say was, “I’m going to need everyone to be straight with each other from now on. No more games. Not just Blue. All of us.”  
  
Aidan said, “I’m always straight.”  
  
“Oh man,” Allison said, “That’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told.”  
  
Blue laughed and said, “OK.”  
  
Gansey thought that none of them were being completely honest with their replies, but she had at least told them what she wanted. Sometimes all she could hope for was to have it out in the air.   
  
The headsets fell silent as Allison, Blue and Gansey all stared intently out the window.   
  
“What are we looking for?” Richard asked.  
  
“The usual.” Gansey told him.  
  
“What’s _the usual_?” Blue asked.  
  
‘The usual’ often turned out to miles and miles of nothing, but Gansey said, “Sometimes the ley lines are marked in ways visible from the air. In the UK, some of the lines are marked with horses carved into hillsides.”  
  
She had been in a small fixed-wing plane with Malory the first time she had seen one. Like most thing son they ley line, the horse wasn’t... ordinary. It was sketched and stylised, an elegant yet eerie silhouette. It was very much more a suggestion of a horse, rather than an anatomically correct horse.  
  
“Tell him about Nazca.” Allison muttered.   
  
“Oh right.” Gansey said. Even though Blue had apparently read a lot of the journal, there was a lot that _wasn’t_ in the journal. Unlike Aidan, Charlotte and Allison, he hadn’t been here for the past years. She was trying very hard to not get excited over the prospect of explaining it all to him. The story always sounded more plausible when the person knew everything.  
  
Gansey continued, “In Peru, there are hundreds of lines cut into the ground in the shape of things, like birds and monkeys and men and fictional creatures. They’re thousands of years old, but they only make sense from the air. From an aeroplane. They’re too big to see from the ground. When you’re standing next to them, they just look like footpaths.”  
  
“You’ve seen them in person.” Blue said, not an assumption.   
  
Gansey nodded.   
  
“Hey, Gansey.” Allison said. “What’s that?”  
  
The helicopter slowed as all four passengers craned their necks to see. By now, they were deep in the mountains, and the ground had risen to meet them. Among the rippling flanks of green forests, the was a green-carpeted field marked with pale, fractured lines.   
  
“Does that make a shape?” she asked, “Richard, stop!”  
  
“Do you think this is a bicycle?”he demanded, but stopped the helicopters forward progress  
  
“Look.” Allison said. “There’s a wing. And a beak. I bird?”  
  
“No.” Said Aidan, voice cold and even. “Not just any bird. It’s a raven.”  
  
Slowly the form came more into view, and Gansey saw that Aidan was right. Even stylised, the curve of the beak and the ruffle of feathers and the curve of the neck, showed that it was unmistakably a raven.   
  
Gansey’s skin prickled. She immediately said, “Set the helicopter down.”  
  
Richard replied, “I can’t land on private property.”  
  
She cast an imploring gaze at her brother. She needed to take photos, to jot down the co-ordinates. More than anything else, she needed to touch the sloping lines of the bird and solidify it in her mind. “Richard, two seconds.”  
  
The look he gave her was knowing; the sort of look that would have started fights when they were younger and more easily riled, “If the landowner finds me there and decides to press charges, I could lose my licence.”  
  
“Two seconds. You’ve seen around here, there’s no one around here for miles.”  
  
Richard’s gaze was very level. “I’m supposed to be at Mom and Dad’s in two hours.”  
  
“Two seconds. Please.”  
  
Finally, he rolled his eyes and turned toward the controls.  
  
“Thank you.” Allison said.  
  
“Two seconds.” He repeated with finality. “If you aren’t done then, I’m taking off without you.”  
  
The helicopter landed roughly five metres from the strange raven’s heart.


End file.
